Ep. 515: "Existential Plasticity"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
Merlin.
John.
Merlin.
How's it going?
I can hear you.
Can you hear me?
Oh, it's not going very well.
Oh.
I know.
Should we yell?
I don't usually start a show by saying that it's not going well.
I cut that part out usually.
Oh, oh.
The part where one of us says it's not going well right at the beginning.
Yeah, yeah, it's probably not a good way to start most of our shows.
You're having technical issues this morning, aren't you?
Well, you know, I don't want to bore you or our listeners.
I don't believe that for a minute.
That's my brand.
I've got a little microphone monitoring issue that no one in their right mind would care enough about.
about to hear, but there it is.
Right.
That's true.
But like I said in our super secret private text channel, it's just, as you know, the whole reason you're looking for help on this is it could be a million things.
It could be.
And the thing is, and I know you know this, when you're trying to solve a problem on your computer and you
Or even not a computer, even old-fashioned boxes plugged into other boxes.
Like a phone booth or something.
Yeah, you're trying to troubleshoot a phone booth.
Trying to troubleshoot a phone booth.
And you look at it a hundred ways.
And it feels to me often in software problems that there should be a button, one more button.
There should be one more button that you push to solve this problem.
And there's not.
Would it be dedicated to solving a given problem?
Here's my thoughts on this.
One, it could be solve a given problem, solve problems in general, or ideally, and this will cost you a little more, just make it work.
The idea that there would be a button that would just solve problems in general, I really do think there should be that.
That's going to cost you a little bit extra.
I think so.
It feels like that's what we've been working on as a society all these years.
This is what we've been training for.
This is what we've been training for.
But in this case, just because I know everybody's interested.
John, I don't have anything else to talk about.
What I've got here is... I wrote down some stuff about my dreams.
I wrote down some stuff about how I make iced tea.
Oh, wait a minute.
And I found a 3D printed bulge to make it look like you have a larger groin than you do.
Not you, but one.
One groin.
All you need is a cucumber wrapped in foil, right?
Yeah, they got armadillos in their trousers.
My situation is I got a microphone.
You know, I moved from the couch over to the green chair.
We talked about this a long time ago.
I think we did, yeah.
I successfully completed that move.
Oh, wait, wait, you transitioned?
I did.
Oh, that's a big deal.
I do all the shows from the chair now.
Gosh.
I mean, I think you must have been very successful in that transition, or maybe I'm just dumb.
I had not noticed a difference in the program, but good for you.
Did you get a table you like?
I found a table out on the deck.
Oh, good.
Was someone just leave it there?
No, I had it, but it was like a deck table, not an inside table.
But I washed it.
My wife loves when I bring outside furniture inside.
Almost as much as she loves when I bring inside furniture outside.
Yeah, it's a metal table.
But at the same time, who knows?
Everything in my decorating style is everything, as you know.
Everything is everything.
Things are in.
I don't want to say meta-eclectic, so I'm going to say meta-eclectic.
Meta-clectic.
Yeah.
I don't know if that works, but.
Somebody asked me the other day about colors clashing, and I said colors.
This is going to be one of our wide-ranging discussions, I can tell.
Colors.
Colors.
Yeah.
A sucker dime for your life on the shotgun scatters.
Speaking of iced tea.
Ooh.
You told me there's a guy out there who gets off our metal furniture?
I like what you did there.
So I moved over here to the chair.
Yeah.
I got my thing set up.
I've been recording over here for weeks now, really since we talked about it.
It was a discovery.
And I've been recording vocals, like live singing vocals into songs that I'm recording from over here.
Everything.
It's a whole new setup.
I look out the window.
Oh, that's so nice.
I got a mic in one hand.
I got the computer over here.
It's been a while, but remind me, you have a pretty good line of sight, right?
Yeah.
So you could see your sister coming, for example.
That would require that I look.
I have a situation where I can look.
I have a situation where my parents went away on a week's vacation.
I see.
And I can look into the reflection of a window window.
on another window.
and see people coming in the driveway.
I can see what they're doing.
I used to be really good at that when I had an office job.
I always figure out ways to use my daredevil hearing and my, you know what I mean?
Where you could bounce things off of things and you get really good at knowing when this particular floorboard creaks this is happening.
Yeah.
That's a very high level teen skill.
I can sit here in the green chair way over by the fireplace and say, oh, the mailman's here.
And someone sitting on the couch
who is actually closer to being able to see where the mailman is, will say, how do you know that?
It sounds like a mystery novel.
And I'm like, I can see it reflected in the window of the window.
Oh, boy, that's incredible.
It's nice.
I do that.
We've got a slightly, well, I don't want to say, but we've got a slightly little beveled sort of, you know, like when a pane of glass has like little kind of like weird prism-y edges around it.
I don't know what that's called.
Yeah, sure.
But it ends up creating what you're describing, which is like I can sometimes see when somebody's walking up to the door even though they aren't in the line of sight yet because my crystal bevel,
Which is which is a great doors album.
Well, let me see the the male they walk.
Yeah, you get a little reflected You know get some motion a little bit of bouncing right you're doing a kind of kind of bouncing and you you are you you're using superhero abilities Well, but you know these are mid-century mid-century It's just a century m'lady MCM pain glass windows
So these windows are like eight foot by eight foot.
And so I get a full picture.
Like I have a, I have a map.
It's not just a little glimpse.
I have a, I can see the entire male truck.
Is it an expansive view, John?
Expansive?
The view is expansive, but then the reflection of the reflection is also expansive.
I see.
I see.
It's really interesting living in a house that has a lot of glass in it.
It's very different.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway, so I'm sitting here.
And I pick up my microphone last night.
And the mic is making sound.
The computer hears it.
You're hearing it.
I can hear you.
I can hear when I record.
I can hear the playback of what the mic has said.
But right now, sitting here, I cannot hear...
the microphone in my own headphones.
Yeah.
So I'm just recording for the first time in, in, in our over 10 year run or 13 year run.
this is a new problem can you imagine a new problem i think that's what they call the law of large numbers you know you wait around long enough and almost everything happens yeah we've had every kind of problem sure but i mean eventually it would have to be this yes yes yes on an infinite time scale yes everything will happen almost yeah when dan and i used to do road work
It seemed like it wasn't possible that he could have another doctor appointment.
Well, you have to eat lunch every day, John.
Every day.
Every day you have to eat lunch and go to the doctor.
That's right.
That's right.
And it always seemed phantasmagorical.
It's like my wife.
My wife.
Okay.
My wife seems to be taking more and more Pilates classes.
I hope somebody's plowing her because that's going to get really expensive if we're actually paying for all those classes.
Has she started going to bar classes?
No, she has barred.
It's one of those things like eyeglasses or back pain.
All the places have the worst names.
We have a place here called Pure Bar.
Yeah, that's what they're called.
That's definitely the type of thing they would be called.
You know what mine would be called?
I'm working on this list a little bit long.
Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes the bar eats you.
You don't have to run faster than the bar.
You just have to run faster than you.
Yeah, yeah.
It's my Big Lebowski-themed bar.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, I can't believe that's still a thing.
Is that one of those things like tie bow or jazz bow?
Oh, just because I mentioned it doesn't mean it's necessarily still a thing.
It's just a thing.
I'll bet it's still a thing.
I remember.
I hope she was getting plowed at that.
Why is it so funny for me to talk about my wife getting plowed?
It's such a funny word.
That just as a cost-saving measure... She should have an affair.
Rather than she be having an affair with her instructor.
No, no, fuck it.
No, no, no, no.
God, no.
No, no, no.
I mean, she just leaves her phone there while she gets... Oh, I see that she's not even doing the exercise.
No, I don't think she's barring other circumstances.
Yeah.
I don't know, but that is going to get... That's a lot of Pilates.
I finally saw what a Pilates machine looks like.
And boy, it's really a whole thing.
Oh.
This is a thing that took me by surprise once when someone said, that's a Pilates machine.
And I said, I thought it was like yoga or dancing Pilates.
I didn't know it had a machine.
It'd be funny if you dressed and warmed up and everything for the wrong event.
Yeah, like I thought you showed up with the leg warmers.
Yeah, like with your Jazzercise outfit on, your jazz bow tie bow.
And somebody said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The whole thing, it's got a machine.
So it's like a rowing machine?
No, it's for your cores.
Okay, no, like I would say, no, I'm convinced.
I'm thoroughly convinced there is no way I could ever do any of that correctly.
It looks like a contraption made for people to be made to look stupid.
I couldn't do it.
The funny thing is I stood there looking at a Pilates machine, having somebody tell me it was a Pilates machine.
I don't even know where the person goes.
That's the thing.
I bet you I couldn't have told you about what it looked like an hour later.
It's good for your core, John.
That's what I heard.
It's good for your core, whatever that is.
I'm going to actually Google it.
Pilates machine.
Isn't one of those things like a... Whoa!
Yeah.
What?
These things cost $5,000, first of all, but what the hell is it?
Well, that's just to get started, you know?
What the hell is it?
How are you supposed to work on that?
I don't know.
It's kind of like a rowing machine with a master's degree, right?
Oh, rowing machine.
Can't you just use a rowing machine?
See, you know, Dan loves to row.
I didn't know that.
As long as he's had lunch.
That's not funny.
Now stop that.
This is a torture bed.
This is a sex bed.
A torture sex bed.
A sex bed for torture things.
Yeah, yeah.
There's so much going on on a Hawaii machine.
It's unlikely she'd be plowed on the machine.
I'm sorry.
I keep laughing at my own joke because that word is so funny to me.
It's so good.
It's so good.
Actually, I was getting plowed at a Chili's.
Did you find an old box of Hustlers somewhere?
Yeah, I did.
Have you been reading Hustler Humor?
I only read them for the photos of people's shit.
Do you remember that people sitting in photos of their big shits?
I guess that was a... You bring up Hustler on here.
Don't think I'm going to go boobs.
Boobs.
There was that.
There was that.
There were other things.
I've always been very poop sensitive in the sense that when I see representations of poop...
Or when people – no, when people start talking too much about poop, I'm always like, that's it.
So it's not even like – so for you, I mean, I'm like that about – see, unfortunately, I'm the opposite of that when it comes to poop because I'm not thinking about actual literal poop.
I'm not German, you know, but like I think poop is hilarious.
But there are other kinds of things like bad headlines where I can't even joke about it.
It makes me so upset.
Bad headlines.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
My wife and I lay in bed in the morning.
I'm sorry.
I'm so sorry.
We're having audio things.
I'm so sorry.
Go ahead.
Over.
No, no, no.
You're saying you don't like headlines in the newspaper that are garbled.
I resent any headline that's not immediately clear.
And then that's just the firing pistol.
Because now we're off on this whole journey.
There's clickbait stuff, of course.
But also it's just the fact that I often feel sometimes in the morning, my wife and I will read each other headlines in bed that are really, really bad, which is pretty sexy.
Yeah.
And then we'll plow.
But she's getting plowed in the dumper.
I could get all my favorite words into one paragraph.
Plowed in the dumper.
And Pilates.
But no, no.
Just like there's one.
No, it doesn't matter.
No, no.
See, now that's too wide ranging.
If I take us into that.
But I have a lot of things to say about writing in general and headlines in particular.
And when you guys.
But you're not sitting.
That's like poop to me.
You don't have like a Sunday San Francisco Chronicle where the paper spread all over your bed.
It's not a paper to spread anymore.
You're trading sections back and forth.
Paper costs $6 and it's the size of a real estate flyer.
Oh my God, isn't that so tragic?
It's so weird.
Jason and I are working on it, don't worry.
You guys are going to take over the San Francisco Chronicle?
Well, you're already in on some of the entrepreneurialism.
Yeah, well, you know, San Francisco.
Woo!
You guys, boy.
Can I credit a listener of ours with probably the funniest third-party Roderick on the Line joke I've ever heard?
Yes, please.
My friend Daniel, Daniel Jalkut, who is, I think he's up in the PNW.
Daniel?
No, he lives in the east-northwest, right?
How do you know Daniel?
West-northeast?
Oh, he might be in the north-northwest, the one by Mount Rushmore.
Yeah, well, yeah, or maybe I thought it was like Instantania or something.
Oh, I'm saying Instantania.
That's really good.
Well, because, you know, I'm still trying to socialize situation as the plural of situations, and it's not going great.
Oh, what's your situation?
Well, when you said to me this morning that there's, quote, things in a long line of more things, I was going to say, yeah, you got a lot of situation going on.
Some situation.
Yeah, I think it's pretty good.
I like it, too.
I mean, I bookmarked this somewhere, but I was just so gobsmacked by this.
You remember last week we were talking about QR Krabs, which is, amongst other things, going to be a series of tours that may or may not be led by Jason Finn in a crab costume.
QR Krabs will become not just a theme restaurant.
It'll become mini-theme restaurants, I imagine.
It'll be a family restaurant.
It's a restaurant where you can get plowed.
Like, whatever it is.
I'm going to QR Krabs.
I'm going to QR Krabs.
And then my friend Daniel said, blah, blah, blah.
And like, okay, how about this?
For your thing where you're going to take people to different, you're going to go from port to port.
Wouldn't that be QR Crabs as port-a-crawl?
QR Krabs is port-o-call?
Port of crawl.
Port of crawl.
Instead of port of call.
Oh, his port of crawl.
That's pretty good.
There's a lot there.
Yeah, and it sounds like a, I think I got it right, but that also kind of sounds like a CBS show for old people.
Port of crawl.
QR Krabs, port of crawl.
Because it's also like a pub crawl.
No, it's got a hat on a hat on a hat.
I remember I first responded to you by saying that sounds like a pub crawl, and you said, no, there's no drinking or anything.
It's like a pub crawl, but also you've got a crab that crawls.
You've got a port of call.
It's a port crawl.
Portmanteau crawl.
There's a lot of situations there.
It's a metal table you brought in.
I've also got long COVID, I think.
Oh, most def.
Oh, I have so got long COVID.
Do you?
Is it a fucking year of productivity?
My brain's like a fucking manatee.
It's just I have this bowling ball for a brain that has no invaginations.
Thoughts just slide off at mid-thought, I think.
I don't even remember what I don't know anymore.
That's the thing.
That's the thing.
The call's coming from inside whatever.
Yeah, I think about this all the time.
You think you do.
Yeah, that's exactly it.
I think I might be dissociating, but I don't know who from or to.
No, how is it possible?
I think I know myself pretty well.
Woo!
But do I?
How would you know?
How would you know how well you know?
Who's the me who knows the me?
Did you get that on your text?
I sent you bulge underwear front padding.
Did you see that?
Bulge underwear front padding.
Bulge underwear.
Bulge.
Oh, my God.
You wouldn't put that in your pants.
Well, I mean, I can only speak for myself.
I already hate pants.
Wait a minute.
Why does the third picture or the second picture look like the bow of a battleship?
Yeah, the second picture looks like it's not done rendering.
It's still kind of in triangle mode.
Yeah, triangles.
So you made this?
No, John.
This is from 2019.
Dear me.
I'll read it to you.
It says, this is underwear bulge padding.
Helps.
Oh, boy.
See, now we're into the quotes being used as italics or joke quotes.
Helps, quote, accentuate, unquote, your natural, quote, curves, unquote.
I've included half a mold.
I've included half a mold if you want to pour it as silicone.
Oh, maybe that's the half bulge.
Print the mold and a mirror of the mold and you get the full thing.
Use rubber bands to hold the two halves together.
I then use a glue gun to seal the mold.
I use smooth.
Okay, mold is a little challenging.
There's a sleeve for your natural curve to help hold it in place.
Thank you to user BRAC1134.
Let's see what else this guy makes.
Anyways, it's metal.
You know, when I first moved to Seattle, my first job here was at the Off Ramp, which was a rock and roll venue, as you know, where Pearl Jam first played.
Yes, yes.
And you were like a bar back at first there?
Yeah, yeah.
And it was owned by a gay man, and it had been a...
Gay bar until Lee Ray the owner realized he could make more money putting rock bands in there Yeah, well, I think that's I think that's how rock and roll spreads throughout the galaxy Yes, what gay bars first everything everyone the rest of the economy collapses you give up and go back to 12 bar blues So most of my co-workers
were were gay and most of them were middle-aged you know i was 21 and most of them were in their 40s and 50s because this had been kind of a seedy gay bar up until this moment hookup kind of place huh well and just like uh because gay scenes were were this constellation of underground venues right right they all did everything and this was a it was a leather bar on wednesdays it was a lesbian bar on sundays
But my coworkers were this very, very wonderful group of eclectic players.
And it was the first time I had been introduced to the idea of a package, a man having a package that you could see and appreciate from across the room.
Yeah.
That up until that point, I had been wearing pants, unaware that pants were
were a thing other than just the, you know, some blue cloth that hung around the waist.
A frame for the painting.
So all of a sudden people are like talking about, oh, his package.
Oh, look at the, you know, and then I was like, well, what about, what about my package?
Now, I know, Merlin, you have special talents in your package department.
Yeah, there's three things about me I can't really talk about.
Oh.
No, no, no, no.
It's okay.
You can talk about it, I guess.
Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.
But one of them is, I mean, there's two things about me that I imagine are a little frustrating to some men.
And one of them is that I have a lot of hair.
A lot of hair.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
See, I'm trying to be careful about this because it's kind of gross to talk about your end dick.
Oh, no, that's true.
But I can say, like, Merlin, your underwear area is an area that a lot of men would be proud of.
Thank you.
Well, I mean, you know, it's just as God made me, sir.
It's just as God made me.
It's capacious when it needs to be, but mostly I just like to sleep.
I know, and it's hard to turn over.
It's also weird.
It makes me a bad fellow traveler for both of those things to have worked out for me.
No, because I try not to, for example, make fun too much of incredibly needy men who seem needy because of their hair situation.
Because that's not nice.
That's not a nice thing to do.
You know what I mean?
It's like, it's not, everybody's sensitive.
I'm sensitive about a million things.
It's just that those two kinds of things are, it's farcical to me how much it really feels like those things are then cleft to the idea of masculinity.
And then what really becomes toxic masculinity?
There's always a bald guy in the middle of it with no, the guy's got no, got no dumper filler.
He's got no soup.
Yeah.
There's an entire quadrant of the internet just like to hold all the situation of people that have a silicone pants augmentation.
I'm not trying to be unkind about it because everybody's got their reasons, but what was the verdict on your package, if I could ask?
Well, so this was the thing.
Up until then, I was just buying jeans at the thrift store, right?
And so after work, we'd all go upstairs,
There was a guy named Roger.
Roger's probably 65 years old.
And Roger had... Has Roger seen a lot of shit?
Roger had seen a lot.
And Roger had... You know, Roger was in that stage of life where...
he had decided like, well, I'm just going to be repulsive now.
I think I'm getting there.
I can't, I can't, I can't fight it anymore.
And so I have to just lean all the way into it.
Like I'm repulsive now.
And in a way that these days would be, you know, would be, would be very political.
People would be angry all the time.
They're angry all the time anyway, even though Roger's been dead for years.
Yeah.
But, but then it was just, then it was just like wonderful that because Roger could say and do anything because Roger was already repulsive.
And I remember distinctly at a party and it was a mixed group.
There were probably 10 of us there and the,
And there were, you know, there were some young people working there at the time.
Now, you know, there were like five people in their early 20s, five gay men in their 50s and 60s.
I got up and was like trying on pants.
There were pants.
It's a pants party.
There were various pants at this party.
And I was trying on pants and I was like.
What?
Like Tupperware?
Yeah, kind of.
And I was like, what about these?
And everybody was like, hmm.
And I was like, all right, all right, all right.
But with a view toward helping you with your package?
With my package?
Yeah.
Because you'd like your package to be on display?
I didn't know.
I wasn't sure.
This is a new world for you.
You're like a pretty girl in an 80s video where you're the librarian and then you take off the glasses, right?
And I shook out my hair.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you have to keep taking off a lot of different pairs.
You have to keep on buttoning a lot of blouses to know which one is for you.
Because I was like, well, is it just that you want your pants to be tighter than my
pants and they were like, well, je ne sais quoi.
It's a tightness, but it's also an accentuality.
Think about trying to explain, this is a terrible comparison in some ways, but like trying to explain what a brassiere does or trying to explain, I mean, I'm not trying to be like gross, but I mean like also anything where you're like, okay, well, it's really not as simple as that.
Right?
Like, think about, did you ever have to buy a jockstrap and a cup for sports?
No.
I've never worn either thing.
I've never owned or worn either thing.
Starting to play Little League when I was, I guess, 11, 10 or 11, it was so strange.
It was my introduction.
Like, the first time I ever heard the phrase sanitary socks.
I'm like, what are sanitary socks?
And those are baseball socks.
They're kind of like lady socks.
But there's that.
You get the stirrups, the weird stirrup pants, which, by the way, I think are a terrific look.
Way better than this look where you get a pitcher out there and his pants are dragging on the ground, straight leg.
I hate that.
Yeah, here, here.
Get some goddamn stirrup pants.
Get your socks.
Get me to a stirrup.
That's what baseball is all about.
But I also, you got to get a jockstrap and a cup.
You remember that feeling at the time of that combination of exhilaration and fear?
Like, of, like, you know, one of those new, hmm, your body's changing kind of things.
Like, oh, man, I'm kind of weird out and really freaked out to, like, get this thing.
But how would you explain that to somebody?
It's a thing you buy to cover your Johnson, hold it in place, and protect it.
And they're like, oh, so it's like pants?
You're like, hmm, no, because it also, the idea is to kind of contain it.
But, you know, how would you describe, if you were a person who knew the je ne sais quoi of pants, it's probably really hard to explain to a snork which pants work and why.
It's not just tightness, I bet.
You have some lift, probably?
Well, the thing is, you know, there's so many... Force perspective.
So if somebody... Let's just imagine that you and I are both UFOs, and we don't have any skin in this game.
Oh, I would prefer it.
Let's just imagine... Here over here, you have this guy over here, and he just has a big Johnson...
It doesn't really matter what his pants are.
He can wear any pants.
This whole show is not going to be about dick size, right?
Well, I don't think so.
It hasn't been so far.
It's pretty deep into the show.
But anyway, yes.
And if it's big enough, any pants will do.
Any pants will do.
But for another guy, just a regular guy, who's one of the normal guys.
You say he's got a median Johnson.
He's just got a Johnson somewhere in the middle.
You know, the bell curve of Johnsons.
It's just somewhere in that giant normal area.
It might be pretty.
It might be a good singer.
But the point is, it's not as capacious.
It's in the middle.
It's not a thing where it's just like, hey, whatever.
Don't worry about your package.
Wear any pants, my friend.
But he can still drive a regular-sized car.
He can drive a regular car.
But for somebody who's just a regular fella, there's a pant that makes it look this way.
There's a pant that makes it look that way.
Your pants then become a thing.
It's just as you were saying about a brassiere.
Yeah, it's like a B cup, C cup type situation.
Yeah, if you're a lady with gazoombas, you don't need to.
I think the word you're looking for is cans, John.
If you got big bonkers or whatever.
If you got big cans and a sweet dumper, you're going to get plowed.
It doesn't matter which shirt you wear.
But if you got other cans, there's a lot of different sizes of cans.
Well, and think about a brassiere.
I don't know.
I don't know much.
I don't know from brassieres, but it's my understanding.
You've got, you've got a number and you got a letter and one is sort of your like rib cage or like, you know, right.
It's like how big around your circumference of your.
Sure.
Your chunk messes.
Yeah.
Perhaps.
Too thick with two C's.
And then the other one is, you know, it's kind of, well, you know what?
I don't want to talk about this, but you need more than one measurement.
And this is why I have such a problem with the rise in my pants.
I rise, I rise.
Well, the real issue, and you alluded to this, is that there is no measurement for the prettiness of your penis.
There's no attractiveness gauge that's visible through your pants.
Unless they're really tight pants.
So there's a lot of... We're differentiating, like, do you have a pretty penis?
Is it pretty?
Versus is it just some kind of, like, huge, vicious hog, regardless of aesthetics?
Right, or is it somewhere in the middle where it's, like, neither pretty nor hideous?
Almost every penis has too much of something.
Hmm.
Well, you know, sometimes it depends on what your preferences are, I suppose.
It's not my cup of tea.
There's only one penis I've really enjoyed in life.
Yeah, I think that's true.
But, you know, you think about it.
You can get too much of a lot of things.
Well, think about it in your head.
Don't say it.
But, like, think in your head, like, well, think of a weird penis.
And you could probably say what it's got too much of.
It's one of those that you hear about in a deposition.
Because it had a distinctive Clinton-like curve.
Yeah, it's like, I could tell that person anywhere.
Right, it looked like a Velvet Underground album cover.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I have one.
So anyway, I was standing up at this party with the pants, trying on different pants, and like doing the thing, like really modeling, like walking back and forth.
This is not your home.
This is your house, not your house.
No, this is a party at a... At someone else's pants.
At a warehouse apartment that should have been condemned in the 50s.
And it was already a very seedy environment.
Mixed and straights, you said.
There were a lot of drugs in the room, but also a lot more, like a very wide variety of drugs in the four apartments that are right around this apartment.
This was the apartment where no one was probably going to die this night.
What makes this night different from every other night?
I don't know.
No one's going to die.
You throw salt over your shoulder.
You leave a chair open.
For but I was parading and then I would go behind a curtain.
Did they play music for you?
Did you have like walk?
Well, there was always music going but no everybody was everybody was doing stuff But I was just like tell me teach me what I should do trying on pants the way you try on ideas Exactly and what I what I realized coming out of that party was that I was Was that I was not gonna be somebody that ever thought that much about his pants and
The amount of work that would go into it.
You saved yourself so much aggravation, John.
That's the thing.
I went out and I went back to the thrift store and I found some Levi's like I'd been doing and like I still do to this day.
But I have this formative memory of like, wow, I was on the edge of...
Was I on the edge of discovering something?
What if I'd gone the other way that night, Merlin?
What if I had decided?
You kid, but no, it's actually kind of a true thing.
I think a body is in a person, a sensate person.
Coming through the rye?
Coming through the rye can only tolerate so many wackadoo obsessions.
Like, for example, I have a friend that I do a podcast with, and that person is obsessed with iPhone cases, is never happy with their iPhone case.
And I'm always like, just, why do you care?
Like, just go use an iPhone case.
It's like, no, this one's too that, and this one's too this.
I think it's fine to have those things, but you can't have all of those things.
Yeah.
And you just freed, if I could say, John, first of all, Hakuna Matata, Journey of Discovery, I'm glad you pants modeled at the party for pants.
Thank you, thank you.
But also, you know, and you learned a little something, you know.
I did.
I did.
And if you think around, you might just learn something.
I did.
Can I top off your drink?
I spared myself a lot of agony.
Later in the 90s.
You learn what's for you, what's not for you.
And that opens up a spell slot now where you can put a new wackadoo thing to be obsessed about.
You don't have to collect them all.
I did have a moment in, like, 96.
I was at the Fred Meyer, and they had Levi's for sale.
But they had, you know, they have the unwashed XX1s, the 501s, or they used to.
They don't make those anymore.
They don't say XX on them anymore.
They say something else.
And then they have the... You're talking about, like, the raw, not washed.
The raw, unwashed ones.
Stiff as a board.
That's right.
Yeah, yeah.
Which was...
They were great when you could find them.
When I could wear normal people clothes, that's what I, as you know.
You and I both wore those, right?
Yeah, we wore them a lot.
I would sleep in them for six months before I would ever wash them.
But they had a pair I had not seen before, which was they'd been washed once.
And so they were shrunk.
But they were still very dark blue, but they had lost that like shiny board-like quality.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The rigidity.
I bought a pair of them at the Fred Meyer, and they were too long.
So I rolled up the cuffs.
This is like 90.
I miss this time in my life.
I've done all of these things.
Yeah.
I rolled up the cuffs, and I was walking down the street.
Yeah.
And I ran into a girl, a girl named Kristen.
Oh.
And she said, what are those pants?
And I was like.
That's a euphemism.
Did she grab the arm of her glasses and move them down on her nose?
What are those pants?
John Roderick, what have you done with yourself?
And this was right at that time of my life when it was like it was possible for me to remake myself.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Just because all of a sudden I had a new wallet chain or something.
Like, whoa, all of a sudden, what's going on with you?
Yeah.
You had existential plasticity.
Yeah, I was like, I don't know.
I hadn't thought of it.
And she said, wow, those pants are really great.
And so then I walked with a little spring in my step.
Yeah.
It's because it was making a pants tent?
Well, no, I just think it was that they were good pants on me.
Good pants on you.
That is a good...
That is a fun stage.
It's like the first week of a relationship when you've, like I say, I was a believer in not washing pants for, I don't actually sleep in them every night for six months.
First few nights I sleep in them because you got to get your stink on them.
You got to get your, you know.
But like, no, seriously, I would never wash a pair of jeans for at least six months.
Yeah, I remember we talked about it all the time.
This is known.
This is part of the method.
But anyways, but yeah, there's something about that when you do wash, you're like, oh, it's turning out all right.
And all I got to do is cuff this a couple times.
But it's like we're still working out the specifics of our pants relationship.
That's a great stage to be in with your pants.
Well, and so then the next person I ran into that said, Hey, what's, yeah, nice pants.
I said, I said, well, they're a little long.
I've got them, you know, I got, I've got to get them hemmed or something.
And they were like, no, no, no.
The cuffs, the cuffs are cool.
The cuffs are really working.
And I was like, the cuffs are working.
That's when the cuffs work best is at the beginning.
And I said, okay, so the pants and the cuffs.
Well, what these people were doing was setting in my brain.
These are the pants.
You're only going to – you never have to think about it again.
You just go by –
these washed once pants, get them too long and cuff them.
Your pleasure zone responded to that and you imprinted on it a little bit maybe.
That's right.
And then I was.
I was like a little duck following a bunch of geese.
I was like, ah!
And I think that those pants really kind of established who I was in the Western State Hurricanes era because I had at least the pants.
I had at least...
the genes that I knew were gonna take me there because I'd already been getting responses from the way ahead of a lot of people John if you got if you got the pants you got the pants I mean you know really anything now the thing is I'm only cautionary tale not to you but to our listeners is to be careful because I know what a lot of you are thinking right now which is I need a hat and you don't know
If you're a man, you don't please, please.
It's like, but then somebody's going to go, yeah, yeah, but don't some guys look great with hats?
Yes.
Some guys look great with hats.
And some guys can probably fly.
But you can't.
Only British people can fly.
I had a guy over the other day, tall guy, lean.
He's got tattoos.
He's got tattoos.
He came over.
He's a lawyer.
And I said, counselor.
And he was here.
He was picking up his little girl.
He's a friend.
And he sees this Homburg sitting on the table.
And the Homburg...
was sean nelson's grandfather's homburg oh my goodness really it's like a like an off-white homburg that's a that's a classy hat it's a classy hat it's one that again but just because i said it's classy listener i'm looking no sit down sit down you're not getting a hat go ahead paul f tompkins really worked hard to make the homburg his hat during
The many years he was trying to be a hat guy?
Yeah.
Did it ever take?
Well, I'm not following Paul F. Tompkins' career right now because of, you know, things, social things.
In the community.
But maybe he's out there somewhere right now wearing a Homburg and he looks amazing.
Yeah.
The crazy thing about Paul F. Tompkins I learned one day, we were sitting talking about men's clothes as you do.
Yeah, yeah.
And he and I said, you know, your outfit here, give me the rundown.
And what he revealed was a lot of the clothes he was wearing were not what he wasn't.
was somebody that was really interested in vintage provenance.
He didn't care about that the jacket was from England.
Classic aesthetic, but it doesn't have to be an actual, you know, King Tut tomb or something.
The jacket was from China.
And I was like, oh,
But because for me, the whole game is, well, this was actually made in 1904.
And controlling for the fact that you're pound for pound a big guy.
Yeah.
I think I'm a medium-sized guy, roughly.
You're a medium.
Small and medium-sized.
But the thing is, even I, in 1985, would have trouble finding clothes.
We talked about this a million times.
I would have trouble finding anything.
It was pretty, what they called a medium in the 60s was what I would call a small today.
Sure.
Sure.
You know what I mean?
Clothes used to just be smaller.
People used to be smaller.
And I guess all the big ones died off a long time ago.
You know what I'm saying?
But in your case, I'm just saying, when you look at John and you evaluate his Homburgs, you have an extra thing going against you, which is you're not a small person.
And also, I am prepared to wear a jacket that doesn't...
actually fit very well because and i i don't want to but because it was made by a certain maker in a certain time in a certain place absolutely it's got like this like super nice stitching and lining and like all it's like a finished product and i'm not going to be one of those people who's all menswear but like i'm telling you sometimes when you put on a really nice blazer
Versus a maybe not so nice blazer.
And boy, does it just even with a long sleeve shirt on feels different.
Yeah, it's nice.
You're like, oh, this is made to be on a person's body.
This wasn't shot from a cannon at a football game.
But in the case of and that was amazing.
And it was and it actually put a little distance between me and Paul because I felt like, oh, I see.
So you're in this for different reasons than I am.
And so we're not going to sit and talk about clothes ever again because we're not talking about clothes in the same way.
It's almost like being – this is not even a good example.
But I was going to say it's like somebody who's – it's like Shelby Foote getting into an argument about the Civil War with somebody who's a Civil War –
or better still, paints Civil War miniatures.
There can be a couple things that they talk about, but at a certain point, or cosplay in general.
You know what I mean?
One person is really interested in kinesthetics and athletic medicine, and the other person likes to dress up like...
Oh my God, I'm spacing out on the X-Men guy on Quicksilver.
Yeah, you've got a long COVID, that's what it is.
Well, I don't like to talk about it too much, but it's pretty capacious.
I have capacious COVID.
One thing I realized when I started to look more closely at heavy metal rock musicians was that a lot of their all leather outfits are actually very thin and made...
so that the air so that they don't die of heat exhaustion and when you realized when i realized it's not like it's not like not like a motorcycle jacket that's made to be thick and durable and you know if you if you skid it across the way you think of like uh like a juice priest guy right like if you uh not glenn timpton not kk downing the singer is glenn rob halford
Oh, Jesus Christ.
I have a huge COVID.
Rob Halford, right?
But you get something a little thinner, a little more like a lambskin type situation.
And that's not going to be great in a motorcycle accident, but it might be nice at a motorcycle bar.
It was the moment where I realized, oh, these are stage costumes.
And I thought that we were really living this life all the way.
And that was a hard...
Moment there too, right?
Yes, but so this Homburg is sitting on the kitchen table because Sean Nelson wore it for a long time until he realized it was too small for him.
This is the one you were in the photograph It's the one in the long winters photograph.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I think I just stole your story I didn't mean no, no, that's fine that that's the the day I came to it Sean brought that hat to the long winters photo session and
He said, this was my grandfather's hat, but it doesn't fit me anymore.
I put it on and wore it through the photo session.
And then Sean said, ah, you can keep it.
This is a thing that you do.
It's a very, to me, a very interesting thing is that some, especially an article of clothing will somehow, it could bounce off the side of a building and land on your shoulders.
And like, you'll just be like, hmm.
And then like, that's kind of a thing you do.
Like your chick magnet hat.
When I first met you, you would wear a trucker cap that said chick magnet on it.
Yes.
And that was just the thing that you did.
Or, you know, again, like the Henderson jacket or like whatever, or the Hamburg hat, like there are things that just like kind of land in your life.
I've given, I mean, not given, you're not a charity case.
I have gifted to you more articles of clothing than anybody else in my life.
And you're about twice the size I am.
The Henderson jacket sort of was... That was a great jacket.
It was such a great jacket.
It was probably a little big on you.
Yeah.
It was a little small on me, but it was small on me.
I think it had a liner, though.
It had like a zip-out liner or something.
It was small on me in exactly the right way that it looked very rock and roll on me.
Yes, it did.
Because the sleeves were long enough and it would zip up.
It was just like kind of tight and in a cool way that a military jacket isn't normally.
Yeah.
I have enjoyed other people's clothes.
Other people's clothes are wonderful if they come to you in a good way.
When you and a girl can, like, share clothes, there's something so fun about that.
Or, like, you ever swap shirts in high school or something, you know, that kind of stuff?
But it's also just nice.
Like, you know, I don't know.
I just think it's nice to be involved in other people's clothes.
I have a shirt that a girlfriend wears.
when i was drinking 1990 i quit drinking in 1994 when i was still drinking she left this shirt or i i wore this shirt out of her house and she said this was my sister's my younger sister's shirt
that I stole from her and it's like the boyfriend shirt, right?
It's a, it's a, a, a extra large shirt being worn by a small girl.
And she was like, it is.
And I needed a shirt and she was like, you can take this as my sister's shirt.
Well, I still have it and I still wear it.
Oh my God.
So it's almost 30 years old now.
this shirt.
And I've been with 30 years.
You've had it 30 years.
I've had it.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that was before Ellen stole it from her sister and her sister lived in Boston.
And the whole time I knew Ellen, she never went to Boston.
So this had come from Boston in 92 or something.
And this, the thing about this shirt is I never retired it.
I've been wearing it the entire time.
And it isn't worn out.
It's not, I wear it, I put it in the wash.
See, that's when they knew how to make a shirt.
See?
See?
See what I'm saying?
Well, it's all my like rock and roll shirts that I finally had to get rid of.
Like we're just falling apart at the seams.
Like the dump truck shirt I've been wearing since 1988.
Yeah.
The stuff that was just rotting off of my body.
And you actually got rid of it?
Or what did you do with it?
You don't want to know.
Oh, okay.
As part of a purge, I got rid of all my rock and roll t-shirts.
You didn't have somebody make them into a quilt?
No.
That's weird.
No one's ever actually done that.
Everyone talks about it.
Nobody does it.
You know, unfortunately, that's not true.
People do do it.
Quilts.
No, listen, believe me, you would not even be the 40th person to say, why don't you take all those disgusting shirts and make it into a quilt?
Yeah.
Which, you know, it's like patriotism.
It's a good idea, but nobody actually does it.
Adam Pranica had a quilt on his bed made out of all of his old indie rock shirts.
Doesn't that make you sad to see that?
Including like three long winter shirts.
Oh, that's the room you die in.
I bet that's hard for him to sleep on my mouth.
Does he dress as a clown and strangle you with a screwdriver while he's reading you the Bible?
I think it probably burns his skin now.
He lays there in bed.
Hey, can you come in here for a minute?
I want to show you something.
Hey, those are a lot of long ones.
Duct tape, gone.
But anyway, this friend, this lawyer friend, tall.
tattooed lawyer friend comes over.
He sees his name.
He sees that his name is my friend tall.
He's his name is Nate.
Nate comes over and he's picking up his little girl and the Homburg's on the kitchen table because of course my little girl found the Homburg and and in a very precious way started wearing the Homburg around.
Oh, that's so cute.
And and you know, and it's too big honor, but but but in an adorable way.
And for a long time, she couldn't distinguish it from a cowboy hat.
And I was like, that's sweet.
Well, because the brim, for people who haven't had exposure to it, that brim's a little unusual.
It's pretty close, you know.
But now she, you know, it's just one of her many dress-up things.
Well, Nate comes in.
We're sitting and we're talking about something.
And Nate casually picks the Homburg up off the table, puts it on his head.
And it's like the Homburg had found its home.
It looked perfect on him.
And I just want to really clarify for everybody out there, that does not apply to you.
Please don't wear a hat.
Go ahead.
The thing is, you know how many people today are going to go out and buy a hat because they think they're going to find their Homburg today?
It might happen.
You might find your duck, but sometimes your duck has to find you.
Well, that's the thing.
Let the Homburg find you.
And in this case, the Homburg found Nate.
Tall guy, you say?
Tall guy.
Tattooed lawyer.
Tattooed lawyer.
Okay.
He's a lawyer.
He's got the money to go buy his own Homburg.
But this Homburg, Sean Nelson's grandfather, this Homburg's got to be from 1924.
Right.
Was he from... Wait, no.
So his... I'm trying to remember without sounding like we're star-fucking.
But his family's probably from Europe at that time.
No, I think... Where did the Einsteins come over?
Well, that would have been 30s.
Yeah, probably.
No, this was the Nelson side.
This would have been Nashville people.
This is a Nashville.
Oh, they come from Ireland.
And I said, I said, Nate.
I'm sorry.
I'm laughing at my own joke.
I can't even say, which is I'm imagining Sean is the product of Irish and Jewish culture and taking away different aspects.
Think about it, though.
Think about it.
I know.
I can see it.
You know I love Sean, right?
You owe me an apology.
And so I said, Nate, I don't usually do this, but, you know, this hat, the provenance of this hat, it's, you know, it's in the cover.
Do you remember that song that was really popular in the 90s?
Or in the 20s, the provenance of this hat.
Oh, I was going to say the other one.
I don't know what can I be, a little bit clearer.
Yes, sir.
Running out the fine corn sea, bully up and teasing.
But this hat appears in the cover art of the second Long Winters record.
This hat has been around the world.
This hat.
The hat has seen some shit.
This hat has been in the shit.
Yes.
Thousand-yard hat stare.
It looks amazing on you.
This hat has found its next – it's like you're the – I was the host –
of this virus i was the host for this creature and now it's leaping it's hopping to a new host yeah because look at you and you know and he's not a uh like menswear guy but he's a well-dressed guy and this was the thing being a tall tattooed lawyer with a with a hamburg with a hamburg and a nice watch but he's also they're just gonna say can we just settle now
But like a Pendleton shirt, like the whole... This hat was doing for this guy what Dan Benjamin has been trying to do with hats.
Okay.
But also, this is going to make the... No.
But also, he's not going to look like one of those guys with tattoos that runs a butcher shop that's called a Provisioner's.
No.
No, that's the thing.
What's amazing about it... With the X with the fork on it or whatever?
What's amazing about the hat is that it...
isn't that right you if it was wrong on yes you said as much yes I understand yeah but it's right on him and so he could wear it it would be the element of flair that is so outside what he normally does that everybody would just go whoa and I'll bet you he wouldn't do it all the time which would be super cool
Yeah, just that's one thing I like about your aesthetic is that I don't know I don't know if we ever talked about whether this is on purpose or not But you have a great look in general, but also like you don't repeat looks and you don't have a bit Right, you know, I mean like it's not like you're not hat guy You have hats and you're one of the people I know who has hats and can wear them Listen, I'm serious.
You guys don't get a hat hats and PowerPoint Just don't do it until you understand why all men suck at both Well, so Nate
Goes, looks in the mirror.
Hat's just sitting on him.
Yeah.
He takes the hat off, looks at it, fingers it, and then he goes, eh, nah.
That's crazy.
Throws it down the table.
That's like Cheryl Teague's asking you if you want to ride home.
That's crazy.
Doesn't need it.
And I was like, yeah, I know you don't need it.
I bet you that guy's got some capaciousness.
That's a confident tattooed man.
I said, nobody needs it.
No.
But this is, you know, this is.
This is your first day.
I just told you you look good in a hat that's got a provenance.
You're about to walk through the door.
You went to the pants trying on party and learned something.
I think I said this to you not very long ago.
Well, you know, I've grown a mustache.
I've got a comedy mustache.
Oh, I like those.
But, yeah, no, it's really silly looking.
But, okay, there's my COVID.
I just forgot what I was going to say.
We were talking about hats.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
And this is the reason I'm yelling at our listeners.
Who am I love?
Hi, everybody.
Thank you so much.
And thank you for supporting the program.
Patreon.com slash, what are we, a moronic online?
Yeah.
Patreon.com slash Roderick on the line.
Thank you.
We appreciate it.
Support the show, please.
Yeah, I need money.
You've got to be careful, because one reason I'm yelling at our beloved listeners is I'm just trying to say, just because we're talking about this, and just because John's saying this, you don't need to go get a hat.
And I'm really trying to save you a lot of—because the problem is—
People, unless someone really loves you, it's like having spinach on your teeth.
Unless somebody really likes you, they don't.
Okay, how about this?
Let's say you're a dude and you see another dude and the dude's got a zipper down.
I am the sort of person that will generally say, hey, check your fly.
Right.
Right.
But I've also I'm very like if you see a stranger with their zipper down, my brain doesn't know what to do because it feels so awkward and not even like always checking out your unit, your package.
No, it's just more than like I feel for them preemptively that embarrassment.
So like the thing is, nobody's probably going to tell you how fucking stupid you look in a hat.
And heaven forfend, you run into one person who tries to be nice and says, that hat looks good on you.
Because you'll forget all the people who aren't telling you you look like a dipshit or a ding-a-ling.
And you're only going to remember that one time the girl who is at a tip-based position, plus her heart, said, hey, that's a cute hat.
You look good in that cute hat.
But you probably don't look good in that cute hat.
Well, that's the trick, right?
When Kristen said, hey, you look good in those jeans.
Never tell a man he looks good in a vest or you'll never have a moment's rest.
Oh, my God.
Benjamin Franklin, take a dirt road.
I left this literally off the top.
What did I just say?
Say it back to me.
The first page of the Farmer's Almanac, never tell a man he looks good in a vest.
Or never again have a moment of rest.
A moment of rest, yeah.
I think I might have become a Lil' Folksy.
That might actually be... That's my SoundCloud rapping name, Lil' Folksy.