Ep. 511: "A Horse of a Different Cat"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Oh, hello, Merlin.
How are you?
I'm well, thank you.
How are you?
I am fine.
Are you having a good Monday morning?
Yes, so far.
So far, I would say it's been pretty good.
Okay, I'd love to contribute to that if I can.
I really hope that you do.
Please don't mess it up.
Yeah, I would do that.
I would mess it up.
No, no, no.
By bringing like what, like bad news or like a downer kind of thing.
No, no, no.
You have so far in our 12 years of recording this show never brought me down.
You always lift me up.
You're the wind beneath my wings.
Yeah, I don't know about that.
I think we just actually did pass a mark.
I think we're officially at 12 years now.
12 years.
12 years.
Someone, oh, you know who it was.
If this show was a boy, it would be masturbating by now.
12 years old.
My daughter's 12 years old.
Whoa.
You know, Dan Benjamin, our mutual friend.
Yes, I do.
Once told me several years ago that I was not one of the first generation of podcasters.
Huh.
I did not.
Did you really say that?
Yeah.
It's not a thing to say to someone.
I did not qualify.
Remember what it was in response to or regarding?
Yeah.
Well, it was just one of these... Was it one of those messages he just sent sometimes?
No, no, it just felt like a conversation.
Like a picture of him in a hat and then saying you're not one of the first generation of podcasters?
He had one of those graphs where, you know, if you had podcasted before this time, then you were, you know, one of the early casters.
I see.
And then past that point, then something had happened.
There was a new...
A new development.
Somebody invented Blogger or LiveJournal or maybe those things died.
I don't remember which one.
You don't need to know.
You're not obligated to know that.
I think what he's saying is, listen, you may be Charlie Pride.
You may be Ferlin Husky.
You may be Kitty Wells.
But you ain't no Carter family.
Thank you.
Yes, that's right.
I was influenced by my forebears.
But he was trying to pay me a compliment, which was that I was in... You don't sweat much for a fat girl.
I was... No, no, he was saying I was in the next...
Not lesser generation, but the next generation.
Maybe not the second generation either, but one of those early groups.
And I owe it all to you.
I owe it all to you.
Well, again, am I dying or something?
What's happening here?
Merlin, this is your life.
Hey, it's Scott Simpson.
Scott, come in.
Do you have a fun story about Merlin?
on you um i guess we'll set aside your relationship with dan for a moment just focus on you know did that did that give you something to chew on a little bit did that that make you think a little bit did it make you want to get ahead of your own well it does what it helps me do is when people when i'm out in the world yes and people you know i live on the west coast so on the east coast people would say when they met you at a cocktail party they would say oh where did you go to school
Here on the West Coast, we say, what do you do?
Oh, what do you do?
You know, you're standing around the group of people.
Oh, what do you do?
And so I'm always embarrassed to say that I'm a podcaster.
I had to do it this morning.
I had to do it literally.
No, like an hour ago, I had to do it.
And what did they say?
Did they give you that look?
Well, you know, for OPSEC reasons, I don't like to talk too much about aspects of my life.
But I noticed a baby carriage outside the door of my office.
And I thought, huh.
Well, one doesn't know.
First, one just sees the baby carriage.
And then a lady stalks her head and goes, what is this?
Was she a witch?
She was a meemaw.
She's a meemaw.
She says to me, I see a baby carriage.
No baby in evidence yet, but there's a baby carriage.
She goes, what is this?
And I mumble the kind of thing I usually mumble, which is I try to instantly become as uninteresting as possible.
Not because I don't like talking to people, but because, you know, in San Francisco, it's just better not to be noticed.
You know what you can say in that instance.
I'm a ceramicist.
No, that's fascinating.
I watched you say that at a cocktail party and everybody was like, wow.
Wow, on the internet?
No, you just say, I fix computers.
That ends any conversation.
I fix computers.
I fix.
I diagnose and fix computers.
And I said something along the lines of, I never know.
I should prepare this.
I should rehearse this the way other people rehearse things that they say to people.
When they say stuff like, I'm a serial entrepreneur.
And they can just say that without laughing.
Somebody said that to me at a party one time.
Oh, shit dog.
I'm an entrepreneur.
Yeah, my favorite is the serial entrepreneurs.
So I guess the other ones didn't work out, huh?
But anyway, just to recap, there's a baby carriage.
No baby yet.
I should also mention that I'm literally laying on the couch playing solitaire.
I'm ahead on daily challenges.
I'm trying to get ahead a little bit in case something happens.
Yeah, sure, you want to build up a backlog.
But wait a minute.
77-day streak.
Your front door to the sidewalk is open.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
Christy, no.
And so she says, what is this?
And I said, oh, you're in the office.
She goes, well, what are you doing here?
And I said, you know, just office stuff.
And she goes, oh, what, but like, what is it?
And so finally I thought, okay.
She's looking at the little statue of Wilberforce and wondering what kind of office is this?
Well, she's probably noticing the very large Dr. McCoy standee that is shooting a tricorder at her baby carriage.
He's not an obstetrician.
He's just a different kind of doctor.
Sure.
But he is a real worm.
He's just a doctor, Jim.
We're just normal men.
And so I finally said, okay, fine.
So I stand up and I go now.
And the thing is, now I'll be me.
I was trying to be someone else, which is like I will become an uninteresting person who people are scared of because they're laying on a couch at 10 in the morning.
Yeah.
And then I walk over and I engaged her and I asked her.
Has she intrigued you at this point?
I mean, I really like babies.
And so I engaged with the baby and that was going okay.
So then we talked some more and we talked about kids and we talked about, you know, I was at this point kind of directing the conversation a little bit because I wanted to just mention, you know, I do believe in the importance of sleep hygiene.
I said, I said, you know, I said, I said, I says to her, I says, I'm 56 years of age.
And I said, I came up at a time when we yelled at our kids a lot about everything.
And rather than just having something as inert as boundaries, there was just lots of rules.
I said, but with that said, I didn't love that.
And I tried not to do that with my kid.
But with that said, I said, I do think sleep hygiene is important.
She says, oh, you know, the parents, they just, they let the child cry.
And I said, oh, yeah, cry it out.
It's rough.
Like when you're trying to get to, yeah, it's tough.
But, you know, it does eventually work.
So we're talking.
Is this woman Harvey Feinstein?
Harvey Fierstein.
I just want to be loved.
Is that so wrong?
Couldn't pick a better narrator for the Harvey Milk documentary, though.
Total delight.
Oh, he's also very good in Mulan, as is Donny Osmond.
Let's get down to business.
Anyways, I'm sorry.
We haven't even talked about Dio at all yet.
But so eventually now, and then, of course, this lady, she's like white on rice.
And I said, she's like, so what are you doing there?
Does she ask you to use the bathroom?
No.
She and I assume I would watch the baby while she went back to the bathroom.
I am literally currently out of toilet paper and the whole place stinks of, you guessed it, acetone because I'm cleaning my nozzle right now.
So there's just a whole lot of things that really aren't up to what in San Francisco is called code.
And so she's, like I say, this is a real sticky lady.
She's sweet.
She's 66.
She's got four grandkids.
And I tried to follow her math a little bit on the grandkids.
And I'm not sure.
Beyond Irish twins, I think there might have been some where one was born three months later.
It's very confusing.
But anyway, whatever.
And she really is pursuing the issue.
She's like, well, so what do you do?
And I say, well, I do record audio stuff.
Like, like, oh, so it's like, and she's now at this point, she's sticking her 66 year old head in and she goes, oh, it's like a studio.
I said, yeah, I mean, kind of.
I make podcast shows.
Oh, this is San Francisco.
She might have been Jerry Garcia's girlfriend.
She might know all about this stuff.
Just a touch of gray right here.
Did you just point at your underwear area?
I did.
I pointed at my bathing suit area.
That's little Jerry.
Um, anyway, I'm almost done.
And then, and then she said, Oh, I said, cause she's Columbo now.
Just one more thing.
That makes sense.
That makes sense.
But yeah, I say, well, I make a, you know, I do, I do pockets.
Oh, podcast.
What's what, what?
And then of course, you know, does everybody sing along?
What's the name of your podcast?
And I said, oh, it's just stuff.
I just talk mostly about computers and stuff.
She goes, yeah, but what's it called?
And I said, oh, do you, and of course, now I'm going to do, I'm going to pivot horde.
And I go to, oh, do you like podcasts?
And she goes, oh, yes.
You got to say that.
I like podcasts on aging.
I like podcasts on science.
And I said, you know, what's really good if you enjoy science, you should check out a wonderful show called You Are Not So Smart.
And it's a show about cognitive bias and our, you know, focusing very heavily on confirmation bias.
And she said,
Oh, I love things like that.
Oh, you should go check that out.
At this point, I think I'm done.
Yeah, you're trying to get, so far you have avoided mentioning the name of any of your podcasts.
Nobody cares.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's weird.
It's like asking somebody to measure their shits.
It's like, no.
So at this point now, I said, I stick my pinky up in the air like some kind of a Frenchman.
And I say, would it be okay if I let the baby grab my finger?
Oh!
Because you got to ask consent, right?
I guess.
Yeah.
I mean, there are a lot of people that just go right in.
I said the same thing I say to a lot of people with bird dogs.
Well, not bird dogs, but, you know, water dogs.
I say to her, I say, he seems really smart.
You don't say that about a bird dog, but, you know.
You know what I mean?
You don't say that.
How big is this baby?
One year.
Oh, so yeah, you can tell if it's a bit.
He has a big head and a very, very intense look.
And it was, it was, it was a nice visit, but the point of the story was I did end up having to do the thing.
And like, because if I just laid on the couch and, and, and respond to what is this, I would say something like I'm, I'm making liquor for my baby or something.
Or like it's a still.
Everything in here is a still.
Or I'm the opioid epidemic.
But none of that would have kept her out.
She would have just come in.
You got to come up with something that would make her go out.
I'm going to workshop that.
Because that would be super helpful.
Oh, you know what I could say?
I could say I make NFTs.
Whatever that is.
Oh, you make NFTs.
I make NFTs.
No, it's a real heartbreak right now in San Francisco.
There was this douchebag restaurant that was being started up.
It was an NFT restaurant.
And it was going to be funded.
It was going to be this douche club that involved NFTs.
And I'm sorry to say, just last week they announced that's not going to happen.
Yeah, it's a bummer.
People were really looking forward to it.
Did they invest like tens of millions of dollars in pictures of apes?
No, I think they invested tens of millions of NFTs, whatever that is.
Sure, sure, sure.
And you get higher levels.
You know, you get to like the silver level if you pay them this much NFT.
I think you'll give someone a photo of an ape is what I can gather.
No, no, no.
It's a digital representation of a photo of an ape.
Yeah.
Somebody once described NFTs to me as basically buying a receipt for a receipt.
Yeah.
You don't actually have anything, but you have the provenance papers for your Walgreens receipt, basically.
And it has an ape on it.
Hakuna Matata.
10,000 space dollars, please.
Anyway, so it's hard sometimes.
So, okay, I'll put that down here on the document.
I need to work on a cover story.
You know, in answer to your question, like... In answer to your query, the questions are written down for me.
Being in a podcast for 12 years now...
when i'm talking to people and they sound like in school suspension they say what do you do and i go oh you know i was i'm a musician and they go oh all right what's your band and it's just like oh well i you know my band is called the long winters we are part we were part of that uh 2000s indie rock uh movement you should tell them the bands you've opened for yeah you know i've heard of them weren't they on parks and recreation
We once played the Metro more than once.
And, you know, every once in a while, I mean, the best time I ever had, I met somebody at a party in Bellingham and they said, what do you do?
And I said, oh, I'm in an indie rock band.
And they got a kind of like a snarky look and they were like, oh, what do you mean?
Like, what's indie rock to you?
And I was like, well, you know, indie rock, Seattle indie rock.
And they were like, what, like the long winters?
Oh, fuck me gently.
And I was so, I'd never been so pleased.
And so you feigned a stroke because you can't, there's no, what's going to happen after that?
Yeah, actually, I am in the long windows.
I'm Rhetoric Johnson or whatever his name is.
That's me.
I'm Rhetoric.
You can stand out with a beautiful website, you can engage with your audience, and you can sell anything, whether that's your products, services, or even the stuff that you create.
Whatever it is you want to do, Squarespace has got you covered.
So much you can do.
You can use their insights to grow your business.
So if you've ever wondered where your site visits and sales are coming from and which channels are the most effective, you can analyze all of that in Squarespace.
And once you've got that data, you can improve your website and build a marketing strategy based on your top keywords or your most popular products.
and content.
Of course, you can sell your products in an online store.
Again, whether that's physical objects, digital stuff, whatever it is, Squarespace has the tools that you need to start selling online.
One of my favorites, you get started with the best in class website template, and then you customize it to fit your own needs.
It really is as easy as browsing the category of your business.
You can find a perfect place to start, and then you customize it all yourself.
Just a few clicks, a couple drags, and Bob is your uncle.
It's the best.
You're using Squarespace right now because that is where the Roderick on the Line podcast is hosted.
Ever thus, it shall be, one imagines.
A big fan of Squarespace.
They do my personal sites, and they probably ought to be doing yours as well as for your business, you know, and
If you've got a business, go on to your business and let Squarespace take care of the rest.
So right now, please go to squarespace.com slash super train and get yourself a free trial with no credit card required.
And then when you're ready to launch, use our very special offer code super train.
And that's going to get you 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain.
Once more, it's squarespace.com slash super train.
Sign up with that offer code super train for 10%.
off of your first purchase.
Our thanks to Squarespace for supporting Roderick on the Line and all the great shows.
What I said was, yeah, very much like the Long Winters.
Yes.
And then you pulled out a tiny, tiny, tiny guitar and started playing Cinnamon.
Cinnamon!
Cinnamon!
At that moment, a piano.
Peter Allen pushes out an upright piano and you start playing Commander Thinks Aloud.
Well, so, so, but then most people look me up and down and they go, you're a rock musician.
And I go, well, sure.
But I also do podcasts.
This is me on jury duty.
This is me having to go to jury duty at the point when they go, Mr. Mann, because, of course, Bob Bowden Kirk is always the judge.
And he said, Mr. Mann, can you ask a little bit of what kind of work you do?
I'm like, I try to be funny making poop jokes on the internet.
I also have a baby that I have to take care of.
But that comes after the poop.
Yeah, you say, like, I'm a house husband who does ads for mattresses.
Like, like after the, what was her name?
Milai, whatever.
After, after the girlfriend, when he gets back with Yoko.
The last weekend.
Yeah.
The last weekend.
You get that guy for the Sean likes, right?
With the tampon on his head.
Who's that guy?
Yeah.
Harry Nilsson.
Harry Nilsson.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They, they, they, they wrote pretty hard.
Those boys.
Yeah, they did.
I mean, you could say, yeah, you're in your white piano phase.
Yeah.
Oh, there's the white, white piano.
You know what?
This is my new EP white piano days.
uh and but then uh you get to like the interviews and stuff from around because i thought of john lennon is kind of like i don't know where john lennon went it felt like it had been like a decade since we'd heard from john lennon even though of course he put out rock and roll uh record he did walls and bridges like he did all those records but still when double fantasy came out which i loved um there were those old interviews it's like what have you been up to john he's like well i take care of my kid and i bake bread i was like oh
Well, those were the years when he went on the Dick Cavett show every six months and talked shit about Paul McCartney, which are great years.
Yeah.
You know, he had a lot of trauma in his life.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Mimi, you know?
Oh, I know.
Did her name Mimi?
Yeah, Mimi.
You had a Mimi, too.
Okay.
I did, yeah.
But so then I get the look, as you well know, which look up and down, and they go... Did this sound... I've heard a lot about podcasts because it seems like everybody has one.
Are you seriously standing here telling me that this is what you do?
Right.
It is a punchline.
It is literally a punchline.
A little bit.
On TV shows, comedians go out there and make their fucking Conan O'Brien.
That's what he does now, but it is actually funny that he's like, yeah, I have a podcast.
Because that's not the same as having a network TV show at all.
Yeah, no, but he's got a podcast.
Right.
I was at a cocktail party last night with Neil Stevenson.
Neil Stevenson wrote, uh, snow crash.
No.
Yeah, sure.
Isn't he, he's a, he's a, he's a, I think of him in that wrecking with like, uh, Gibson, uh, didn't he write, didn't he write, um, yeah.
Didn't he write like a really good, uh, sci-fi, uh, cyber future.
Yeah, he's a cyberpunk.
Neil Stevenson?
He writes some things, some books.
He writes many books.
Yeah, yeah, I have four.
I saw four of his books.
They're on my Kindle right now.
I just haven't read them yet.
He did write Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon.
Cryptonomicon.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, well, so he and I originally met through television.
He's an author.
He is an author.
Well, I say that I'm... If you go look at my internet page, it says that I am a writer, which is what I am.
I'm a writer who... Are you there?
My internet page says... Oh, shit.
I dropped... You dropped a little... I think you're back.
Yeah, you dropped for a second there.
Okay.
Yeah, but he can say this is the thing.
Being an author... He's an author.
He's an author.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's a beloved author.
And so we met through Adam Savage.
We've... We've...
Very different personalities.
We share a lot in common.
We talk about swords.
I actually had a sword in my car, and I said, I'd like you to take a look at the blade and give me your evaluation.
And he said, well, I can do that.
You know, it's this kind of relationship.
But we enjoy one another.
We do a little ad hoc antiques roadshow.
I talk about three or four times more than he does.
But he responds to what you say by either very slightly raising an eyebrow or very slightly smirking.
And those things are the clues that he is enjoying what you're saying, you know, because if he doesn't raise his eyebrow or doesn't slightly smirk, then you're you couldn't you can't know whether he enjoys what you're talking about.
You're losing Neil.
Or maybe not.
Maybe he's completely into what you're doing.
You know, he doesn't do eye contact very much.
Yeah.
But yeah, so we were talking and I said to him, do you have a podcast?
Oh, geez.
And he said, no, I don't have a podcast.
I don't need a podcast.
I'm busy writing, you know, I'm writing the cyberpunk literature of the future.
I don't need to sit and talk to some ding-dong in San Francisco about, you know, about cutlery.
Yeah.
My color is soaking in acetone right now because I stained it.
Yeah, I know what it's like in there.
You know, the little Harvey Fierstein woman that came in, she had to walk past nine gallon jugs of urine that were sitting under your desk.
No, that's not fair at all.
I got rid of my Clorox bottle.
I probably should drink more water.
No, no.
There's a lot of sexy cartoon dolls, though.
Oh, believe me, I know.
Believe me, I know.
But no, so I say in those moments when people are looking at me and they're like, oh, you have a podcast?
Is seriously what you're trying to tell me right now?
Right.
I say...
Well, you know, Dan Benjamin once told me that although I wasn't in the first generation of podcasters, I was in an early generation of podcasters.
And that accounts for why I have multiple podcasts where I just talked to another Gen X white dude.
Yes.
And yet people listen to it because when they started, that was still a novel idea.
Yes.
And then you reach into your overcoat, you pull out an SM7B and literally drop it.
Yeah.
I'm like, look at that.
Look at that.
You like that?
I got more of this.
I got five of this.
If you started a podcast like this one now, forget about it.
But you can also combine it with Close Magic, like David Blaine, where you can see the person, well, please, could you look, please, in your hip pocket?
And there's a cassette of the podcast you've recorded with that person already in there.
These days, we would have to have a gimmick.
We'd be talking about something.
You've got to have a podcast about something.
Would it be about Dio?
What would it be about if we had a podcast?
It used to be about Beatles and Hitler.
Music would be a big... Although we just did talk about John Lennon about 30 seconds ago.
It's still about Beatles and Hitler.
We still haven't talked about Dio.
We haven't talked about... I was thinking about... I'll never ask you... I know you're not a big music listener.
You don't just have it on.
But I just was... I don't know.
Now I don't want to ask.
Because now I feel like we're being basic.
Or mid.
Whatever that means.
Mine was... See, I said Dio.
But really, it's, as you know, Heaven and Hell by Buck Sabbath.
That's my favorite Buck Sabbath album.
Wow.
Strong words.
Dude...
You've got to bleed for the dancer.
I mean, he loves saying lost and never found.
He uses that in like four songs.
He does.
I feel very strongly that to choose heaven and hell as your favorite black Sabbath album is a thing that you could only do if you were 10 years old between 1979 and 1981.
Yeah.
It's funny you should say that.
I had a dream last night about the, I know you know Albertsons.
You think an Albertson stir-fry dinner could make your apartment at home, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Christmas Twin Falls, Idaho.
Yeah, no, it's a spoiler alert.
His mom was good and she got him out.
Yeah, he got him out of Twin Falls.
So when I was a kid in the 80s, a young teen, our Albertsons had a section where they sold albums.
And maybe cassettes and 8-tracks, I don't know.
But, like, I bought my first Beatles album at an Albertsons grocery store.
And I was dreaming about buying an album at Albertsons literally last night.
Whoa, my first record.
I think I might have.
Was it Abbey Road?
I think I got my first record at Long's Drugs.
Yes, this used to be a thing.
And they had the flippy white plastic differentiators and everything.
I mean, not a lot.
But they had cameras.
That's where you went for camera and film stuff.
I definitely bought.
I know one time I bought Frank Zappa's orchestral record.
Oh, the drugstore?
Yeah.
At the Long's Drugs.
Damn, that's wild.
And it was marked down to 99 cents.
And I was like, well, I mean, it's Frank Zappa.
You know, I keep hearing about him from the smart kids.
Maybe I should get a Zappa right.
You should play that French horn fast.
It did not have any words on it.
It was just... Yes.
It was pure orchestral music.
Now, sort of like Dan says with podcasting.
You know, that's... I like that.
Like, I like...
peaches and regalia like i like hot rats i like that stuff but like i'm really all about like uh what was his two a record run the camarilla burlo and um you know those two in a row uh apostrophe and the other one those two i love i think that's or joe's garage even the good place yeah but your favorite black sabbath record is heaven and hell so have you ever listened to the black sabbath album heaven and hell
I have.
I have.
All the other ones have one or two good songs on it, but Dio sings every song on that album.
Wow.
Yeah.
No.
You've got to believe for the dancer.
No one knows the answer.
What did I hear the other day?
Was it Tenacious D did a Dio cover?
No, somebody did a Dio cover.
I think that that song, the greatest song in the world or whatever, is like a Dio sort of tribute.
Tribute's the name of the song.
But yeah, they do some bananas covers.
I got a show.
I got a full-length show.
If you like Tenacious D, I've got a full-length show of them in Europe where the crowd would not let them leave and they were just en fuego the entire time.
That's interesting.
Well, you know, Dio, yeah.
I mean, we have a lot to learn from him.
So you don't have Monday morning music, really?
We do.
Monday morning music?
Is that the name of our new show or our 12-year-old show?
Monday morning music with John Merlin.
So, Merlin, what are you listening to?
Drop the needle on a new week.
Merlin fast forwards after 10 seconds of listening.
Did you get a message from Captain Marm telling you that we passed our 12-year anniversary?
She gave me an anniversary message.
12 years, she said.
Congratulations.
That's so sweet.
I saw it on the internet somewhere.
Yeah, pretty well.
Suit of Vomit.
Oh, you know what it was?
And then I was like, you know, and somebody's like, oh, yeah, you know, technically the first canonical episode was keeping me.
I was replacing Dan, much to his chagrin.
I'm back to work.
So from the beginning, you know, episode zero was Sue to Vomit.
And episode one is Keep Moving and Get Out of the Way.
And I was like, you know, we really got lucky with that one.
real early we got it we got in there early and i i posted a video of my baby uh a month earlier a month before that because this is you know that was canon long before it was a bit that's just something i taught my child that everybody should teach their child you have to keep moving let's review keep moving so a lot of people say some people say keep moving or get out of the way which is i know i think that's better advice than nothing but no no no john what is what is what is the crucial part of that
It's keep moving and get out of the way.
Keep moving.
You have to do both things.
You're obligated to do both.
Yeah.
So you can see me talking to my baby at, believe it or not, and Albertson's now lucky.
But asking the baby, I said, the baby, what's the first rule of the grocery store?
Have you ever seen this, right?
And the three-year-old says, get moving.
And I say, what's the second rule?
Kid thinks for a minute, munches on a goldfish cracker and goes, get out of the way.
And then, now look at us now.
And you were talking into your wallet.
Oh, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
Oh, gosh.
Into your shoe, but you had your wallet in your shoe.
I should get a hat.
I'm not really a hat guy.
I watched MASH last night.
I was thinking Hawkeye looks good in a hat.
That's a good hat for Hawkeye.
I talked to a lady friend the other day, and she said, all the ladies think that if a guy's wearing a hat all the time, that he's bald.
Oh, absolutely.
It's just what the ladies are thinking.
Well, it reflects a kind of disordered thinking to always wear a hat.
I was at the state fair, and there's cowboys and cowgirls.
Yeah, they come to the state fair to do their cow things.
Oh, cool.
And some of them are walking around the state fair in their legit boots with the legit spurs, and they've got legit hats on.
Hot.
And somebody walks past me, and they're wearing a hat, and I'm like...
You know, that's a pretty good hat.
And then my daughter, every time we go to the State Fair, she wants to take the old-timey photo.
They get the family in there with the fancy hats.
So we have a little collection of old-timey photos.
Last year, we ran into our old-time photo, and the wife of a friend situated herself next to me in the old-timey photo.
And when the photo came out, Ariella, my daughter's mother slash partner,
pretty not into the fact that I and the wife of a friend looked like the husband-wife in this.
And Ariel was over on the side looking like a... She knows it's a tableau.
Yeah, or she looks like a spinster aunt standing over on the side while I'm sitting here with the wife.
So she was like adamant, like nobody in the picture.
It's just my mom, my daughter, my daughter's mother slash partner and me.
And they put a cowboy hat on me this year.
Okay.
And we get the photo back and everybody remarks, wow, that cowboy hat really looks natural on you.
Like it looks, how did you get it?
You have a big head.
So you could be either a newscaster or a hat person.
I need a, I need a, but the problem is none of the hats fit me.
I have to get a custom hat.
And so I got this hat.
You have to get a gusset sewn into it probably.
You got like a Frankenstein hat, don't you?
Well, you know, a custom hat.
No, no, but it's definitely a seven and seven eighths.
It's not.
No, come on.
I'm like an eight.
I'm like an eight and an eighth or something.
I have to look.
I've got my hat here.
I've got a hat.
So see, you have an even bigger head than I do on a smaller frame.
I think I'm exactly the right size.
You know, Abraham Lincoln says your legs should be long enough to reach the ground.
Oh, that's clever.
Are you sure that wasn't Marcus Aurelius?
Might have been Marcus Twainus.
No, I can wear a hat that's made in normal size.
They're just not available.
There's never a seven and seven.
This will go all the way on, probably.
But they said, you know, how did you get this normal looking cowboy hat to sit with such a jaunty?
And I was like, have I not?
Am I not a man?
Have I not looked at a thousand sepia tone photographs of old cowboys enough that I know how to put a cowboy hat on?
Maybe like a little bit of a Walt Whitman vibe.
A little bit.
A little bit of a cocky down to earth poet kind of hat.
It's got to be on sideways a little bit.
A little bit of James Joyce.
A little bit of James Joyce.
That's right.
It's got to sit in a certain way that says, voila.
you know, uh, my newest poem.
And so they said, why don't you wear cowboy hats all the time?
And I said, should I just, it's going to be vests.
Should I be, should that be my turquoise jewelry?
I mean, you could see it.
You could see I've got cowboy hats.
I could see running an RV lot in, in some Southern state.
Oh,
I live in the suburbs of Seattle.
There's nobody out here wearing any kind of hat.
We just let the rain fall on our bald pints.
What's it going to take to put you in this Winnie today?
See, I could do that if I lived in Arizona.
Yeah, it's hot there.
So are you thinking about it?
I mean, you've got something that a lot of men never get because – I think you – I don't want to misquote you.
You said something like – He made a full head of hair into his 50s?
Oh.
But then that's the surprise is you take it off and it's like, oh, look, there's a whole person under there.
Wow.
God, that guy's head is big.
He has so much hair on that huge head.
But you say everybody gets the beard they deserve, that their face deserves, right?
Yes, that's right.
And it's like a medieval hex or something, really.
But in this case, you got a compliment.
about wearing a hat, which is, I think you could, there's like, you could count on one hand the number of guys you know that have ever had that actually happen.
They don't like famous hat guys, but then you got something, you got encouragement to wear a cowboy hat?
What's next, leather pants?
Well, I, so I, I went through a phase when I, I, in my twenties, I was dating a girl who was talking about, always talking about her ex-boyfriend in San Francisco who wore leather pants.
And I was like, leather pants, is that a thing I should wear?
Leather pants.
Yeah.
Maybe I'm going to, maybe I should get leather pants.
And I, you know, I, I tried a couple of squeaking.
These are terrible.
Are you kidding me?
What a terrible idea for pants.
Yeah.
You're going to go back to your waxed Filson's, right?
You know what they say?
Like if you heat up your crotch area, then it makes you sterile because the sperms would need to be out in the cold.
Oh, I see.
That's why you wear chaps.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You wear chaps so that your sperms are in the cold.
And I was like, these leather pants, my sperms are not in the cold.
This whole thing is, it's just heating up.
There's nowhere for the air to go.
Were you talking to somebody you knew well when you said that?
Well.
It wasn't like on the subway or something.
Howdy, ma'am.
I was actually, I was in a cowboy town with another girl that I, a long-term girlfriend, Shanti.
Shanti.
Shanti and I were in a cowboy.
No kidding.
That means peace.
Yeah, we were in a cowboy town.
Shanti, Shanti.
Shanti, Shanti.
I was dating Shanti when we first got flip phones.
That sounds like a 90s independent film.
Well, you could put, you could push the button and say someone's name into those early flip phones and it would supposedly dial for you, right?
Voice recognition.
And so when we were on those first long winters tours, early, early days, even before I met Merlin Mann, I would flip open my phone and I would go,
Shanti, Shanti.
And the phone would never dial Shanti's number, but Sean Nelson, of course, decided that they would just say Shanti, just out of, you know, and it became a, it became a,
I'll always associate that word with T.S.
Eliot.
Shanti.
When he reads the Wasteland, Shanti.
Shanti.
But no, Shanti and I were in a cowboy town, Monroe, Washington, and we went to a thrift store and we found a pair of white leather chaps with fringe that fit her perfectly.
They were size double, zero, whatever.
Some cowgirl.
Was she into it?
I said, oh, yes.
And I said, let me buy these for you.
How do you let that one off the hook?
You found a white chaps girl.
White chaps.
Do you realize what the chances are of that happening?
She moved to New York and became a naked fire juggler.
And I'm not even kidding.
Like those ones we saw.
The Elon Musk party.
Right, right, right.
Like where you go to an expensive place and you're naked and you juggle fire.
See, I've always held it.
It's one thing.
Like a person spends, a hypothetical person spends his whole life waiting to meet somebody who will wear the Catwoman costume.
But it's a far rarer thing to meet a person.
And it's her idea to wear the Catwoman costume.
Yeah.
That is a horse of a different cat.
I realized earlier today, I realized that my problem was, well, so, not to talk about all the lunches I've had recently.
Oh, I'll allow it.
But I was having lunch with Maria Semple, and she's also an author, like Neal Stephenson.
So it's really a family of lunches I've had with authors recently.
That could be a podcast right there.
That's right.
John talks to authors.
Literary lunchtime.
And Maria is now moving to New York.
She's got an apartment in New York, and it's not any kind of revelation to say that her marriage is coming to a close, and she's beginning a new life for herself, living on her own in New York City.
And she's on her way to New York.
I'll allow it.
I'll allow that.
Sometimes you got to repot yourself, you know, it's time to repot.
That's right.
And she's somebody that likes to talk to other literary people and go walk down.
She likes to go to Broadway shows.
She obviously loves lunch.
She loves to lunch.
Although the Carnegie Deli is closed.
So who knows where you're going to lunch?
Anyway, I'm saying to her.
Oh, well, you know, attention deficit disorder has got me in a bind where I just realized that my whole life I've never been able to accurately make any kind of doctor's appointment because I just can't fix the things in my life.
And she's nodding.
Which kind of nodding?
She's nodding to communicate that she's listening.
But she's got a look on her face where she's also waiting to talk.
And I go, I get done with this.
I get done with my little like, yeah, it's just really hard for me to do these things.
And she said, well, let me tell you that the reason you think that you have attention deficit disorder is because you never got married.
Because let me just tell you right now that all of your male friends also cannot do any of those things.
But they have wives who do those things.
Oh, wow.
And make these guys think that they are super capable guys.
So now we're back to Hong Kong Phooey and the dog.
A little bit.
Right?
Like, they think they got it wired when it turns out the dog's the one doing all the kung fu.
Yeah, the dog is underneath making sure Hong Kong Fui doesn't fall through the hole.
And Hong Kong Fui's like, look at me!
Yeah, it lands in the dumpster, if memory serves.
And I said, well, wait now, just a cotton-picking minute.
This friend that we have in common, he's very capable.
And she said, all his wife does is complain to me about how he doesn't know which drawer has the silverware.
oh dear he's never he's never made a plane reservation in his life and i go well well what about this they shouldn't talk to each other well and that's the thing she's given away all the secrets and i said yeah well what about this other very capable friend and she said all we do is talk about how all of these guys don't know how to do anything but that they but that we do it all and we're tired of doing it imagine how they talk about you john
Well, and so I'm like, well, so what are you saying that I don't, that I'm just living, I'm just living in a, in like a semi wrecked car because I didn't get married.
She said, yes, absolutely.
You had gotten married at a young age.
You wouldn't, you, you would be one of these people that's walking around not knowing which drawer the silverware is in.
And I said, I live in as a bachelor.
I don't know which drawers has the silverware.
It's one of those.
They're stacked here.
I don't, which one has the can openers?
I don't know.
But she said, no, no, no, no, no.
You, you, you're just, you're just somebody that never got a partner.
And the partner is the one that does the things that you don't know how to do.
Mm-hmm.
And whether the partner resents it or not is part of your relationship.
Some partners do, some partners don't.
But don't be fooled that you're super capable friends who walk around like smirking.
Fucking cock of the walk.
I know how to go to a doctor.
I do it all the time.
I make appointments and things.
They're just these guys who are like, you know what's amazing?
If you throw your clothes on the bed, the next day they end up washed and folded here.
They're really more like super children.
Yeah, exactly.
They're extremely advanced children.
But they are Hong Kong foo-ing.
Yeah, number one super guy.
Totally, totally, totally, totally.
That gives you a lot to think about, huh?
Well, it does because I have recently, there's somebody in a white, oh, it's my sister is arriving.
My sister, I just, I looked out the window and I'm like, why is there a car back in my driveway?
Do we have it in the budget for her to visit with us?
Is that in the budget?
Oh, well, so here's the problem.
Yeah.
My sister has moved to Whidbey Island.
And my sister likes to come to Seattle because she wants to be involved in my daughter's life and in our family.
Sure, sure.
And Ariella, my daughter's mother slash partner, has a big house.
She has an extra room.
Susan likes to stay with Ariella because that's where the action is.
Well, Ariello recently.
You're learning a lot about yourself right now.
I really am.
Right.
Seriously.
You got your simple woman telling you about, like, you don't even realize all the things that you don't know you don't know.
Oh, wait a minute.
She's literally knocking on my door right now.
Would you hold?
Would you hold?
Should I?
Hang on.
Okay.
I am a big fan of Susan.
I'm not a big fan of John's whole family.
There's not a loser in the bunch.
Susan is a lot of fun.
Here, let's listen.
We never know when we're done.
You're welcome to come in.
Would you like to say hi to Merlin?
Hi, Merlin.
Susan says hi.
Hi, Susan.
Oh, Merlin says hi.
Ask her if she's happy with her accommodations.
No, no, she's left.
Oh, dear.
She's left because she said... She's there to do laundry or something?
Like, what's going on?
So this is the thing.
So Ariella has recently started to say, now, wait a minute.
Why am I inheriting...
Not only are you asking me to try your doctor's appointments for you.
But also, I have the nice house, right?
Mariella has the nice house.
That's where people want to go.
That's right.
Well, and I say, well, you were the one that wanted to have a big house with all of them have cocktail parties, but you never do have cocktail parties.
Was that incredibly persuasive?
She said, I wanted to have a house where I could have cocktail parties.
Big difference.
And I was like, oh.
Yeah.
It's like owning a boat.
Yeah.
I see.
So you didn't intend to have cocktail parties.
She said, no, I wanted the potential to have cocktail parties.
I completely understand.
And that is still a notch below the aspirational people who buy 4x4s to drive their kids' soccer cleats around.
That is a completely sane boundary.
I'm sorry.
Now I feel like I'm taking your mother-daughter partner side.
But that's a very sane boundary to me.
That's the same.
And so what was your response?
Oh, so the thing is that although she and my sister traveled around the world together and are independent friends...
She is now saying, now wait a minute, I did not inherit your sister living with me.
And I said, well, let's all just circle the wagons here and realize that she should not ever stay with me.
What's happening to her house on Tybee Island?
Well, she lives there, but it's many hours drive from here.
So, so she comes here, but she wants to spend the night because, you know, obviously like you're not going to drive home once a month or so.
I mean, I'm not getting on Susan's grill, but is it, is it, is it something where it's like, is it like enough of a pattern that's maybe a thing we should talk about?
Yeah.
Every 10 days, two weeks.
We are talking about it, which is that, that Ari expressed, Ari very passive, uh, said something to the air, uh,
One time when Susan was in the room said something to the ceiling fan, you know, like, well, I don't know if you should stay here every time or something, you know, just up to up into the sky.
And of course my sister being who she is was like, well, I,
Well, fine.
I guess I'll never stay here again.
Susan can't hear you right now, right?
And she doesn't listen to the show.
No, she got in her car and drove away.
Oh, dear.
I don't think she does.
Okay.
Well, because she's, you know, because me saying, like, I'm actually still podcasting, she was like, you said you would be done by 12.
And I'm like, I never did.
And she's like, well, stop, stop, stop.
Anyway, so then Susan comes to me and says, well, you have an extra room in your house.
Why don't I fix that up as my room?
Now, she says this knowing that she and I every 18 months have an enormous blowout fight.
Yes.
Where we don't talk for six months.
Every few years, you got to have a war.
It clears the air.
You got to go to the mattresses.
It clears the air.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
It's 100% true.
You know.
It was all real proud of you.
Today, I settled all family business.
Mm-hmm.
Don't talk to a man like Mo Green like that.
What precipitates that fight is never anything you could predict.
It's just like a cicada flies into the room.
It's like a pile of emotional rags just ready to catch fire from the wrong spark.
And so she says, what if I take over the guest room?
And turn it into my room.
And then I can stay there when I come.
And I'm just like, you know, you're just setting the egg timer on when there's going to be some problem, right?
Because it's my house.
What's your life of her position as your sister wife?
What if she was the one, she's very organized and she likes yelling at people.
Maybe you say, listen, why don't you go fix yourself up a little room in there, you know, and I'll give you a little bit of space in the fridge.
And you become my, I guess it's not a common law wife.
I'm not familiar with Washington law, but you would be able to say, I mean, maybe not a sister wife, but a wife's sister.
No, no, no, no, spinster aunt.
She's a spinster aunt.
That's what it would have been in 1860.
Oh, you're talking about an old maid.
Yeah, but no, no, no, because the thing is, what she really is, is a game of go, except every piece is a grenade.
Yeah, a moment to learn a lifetime to misunderstand.
So last night she came, she stayed at Auriela's house.
And then said to me over dinner, oh, I bought a dresser.
When's a good time for me to come over?
I admire her assertiveness.
Oh, yeah.
That's assertiveness, John.
I couldn't do that.
I wouldn't buy a dresser and tell someone about it.
Jiminy Christmas.
She said, I bought a dresser.
I think you're going to like it.
But I have to come in tomorrow at dinner.
And I said, well, I talked to Merlin starting at 11.
And then, but, you know, of course, no, I never say, but sometimes we push to 1130 when we're talking in ye olde English on our text message.
Yes.
And then Susan turns to Marlow and says, well, you're going to have to take down your blanket fort.
Oh.
Which currently has transformed the guest room.
You get a full poly walnuts for that one.
Oh.
Oh.
Whoa.
Enormous blanket fort in there currently.
Well, that's what a kid makes.
Yeah.
And Susan says, well, I'm going to take down the blanket fort.
And Marlo, currently second most assertive person in the family, but vying even at 12 to be number one, says to Susan, no, you're not.
I need to take it down.
Because there's a way that I need to take it down.
You have to show respect.
And Susan goes, oh, okay.
Oh.
And, you know, I think even in that moment, the torch may have been passed where Marla was like, you're not doing this.
She is the Kwisatz Haderach.
Yeah.
Right?
So maybe, I mean, I've never read the book, but we're talking about a Bene Gesserit type situation.
What I've got here is a sister on the porch with a dresser ready to move it into a blanket fort that my daughter has explicitly said, do not touch the blanket.
Furniture is the mind killer.
The thing is, there's no way that dresser is fitting in there next to the blanket fort.
Because the blanket fort is a sprawling development.
Right, right, right.
That's taken months and months to... A literal tent city, yeah.
Yeah, I haven't had any house guests lately.
And so what was there to do in the guest room except...
And of course, I also collect old mohair blankets from the 1950s.
Well, of course, you're not a monster.
Yeah.
So that's what's going on over here.
Yeah, that's that's I'm going to let you go in a sec.
I'm going to use a term that I don't really know anything about.
Um, I've heard this, I think it's called neuro linguistic programming, and I'm pretty sure it has to do with being in the seduction community and like trying to make girls have intercourse with you by being mean to them.
And I think it's called neuro linguistic program.
Is there any chance that your sister wife and spinster aunt has had some kind of background in neuro linguistic programming?
Well, you mean that they're negging me or that they're... I couldn't say.
...or that they have been nagged?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, no, she's the guy with the hat and the rings, is what I'm saying.
The thing is, I'm terrified of them.
You're that tender fawn at the bar, and she's trying to separate you from your friends.
Long ago, I realized... Is your hair that way on purpose?
Long ago, I realized I'm terrified of them all, and I'm just trying to avoid getting hit with a broom.
Oh, Jesus, of course.
Well, and so when Ari says to me some vague thing, when she talks to the ceiling fan about my sister, then I realize I'm about to get hit with a broom.
And so I need to go over to my house and hide under my mohair blankets.
But my daughter has taken them all and built a geodesic dome.
Oh, my God.
It's like somewhere between Borges and Louisa May Alcott.
And you're never sure what's going to be in a given day.
I literally have no idea how many chairs.
are under that fort.
Well, that's not your concern, John.
She's the architect.
It could be as many as seven.
Chairs go missing all the time.
That's true.
Absolutely.
I'm like, what happened to the blue chair?
It's gone.
Yeah.
And I don't know where because I, you know, the blanket fort.
I think you're really going to like that dresser.
I'm scared in there.
Well, so Susan's got a whole... Is the dresser off?
Did she get it out of the car herself?
No.
Well, I don't know because she came in and poked her head in and got mad at me and left.
But, you know, the dresser is just a toehold.
Yeah.
The room is going to fill up, and I don't know what all that's going to be.
That's when you start getting tampons and lady razors.
You know what I mean?
They call it the thin end of the wedge.
If you use the thick end of the wedge, it really doesn't wedge very well.
But a dresser that you then make your brother husband carry in with you?
Jimmy, that's a toehold.
What's going to happen is I'm going to be making a Keurig one morning, and she's going to come out of that room...
And she's going to be mad that I'm making too much noise in my own kitchen.
And I don't know.
Also, she's been thinking of turning the kitchen into a studio.
I don't want to get hit with the broom.
But at the same time, I'm not some rat in the corner that lives in beer.
You're on the deed.
What's going on in there?
What is this place?
Let me out of here.
Go help your sister.