Ep. 520: "Seven Minutes in Mexico"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
Then we have to do the show.
Yep.
Yep.
I mean, it's a lot of pressure.
We've been really good lately, like for the last couple of years.
Yeah.
The show's been really good.
I don't know if people know it, but the show.
Hi.
Happy New Year, everybody.
Rabbit, rabbit.
Been really good the last couple of years.
But yeah, so now we got to start a new one.
Yeah, 2024, people are going to be like, well, what are they going to do now?
It's like, just keep on upping the game is what we're going to do, is keep on upping the game.
Keep on upping the game.
You know, Steamboat Willie is out of copyright now.
Maybe there's aspects of our show that we should open source.
Is that right?
Yeah.
What, Disney didn't figure out a way to...
to, like, keep that zombie alive, that copyright zombie alive for another 50 years?
John, I'm here to educate you about every new thing that happens in law.
Okay, go ahead.
I was born like this, and I woke up like this literally 29 minutes ago.
I know, you're just like God made you, sir.
LAUGHTER
Yeah, but I don't know.
You know, something, as we say, for the community.
Maybe there's aspects of our show.
We should probably talk about this offline.
Maybe there's aspects of our show.
So what happened was, it was a long time ago, they extended copyright as long as they... The White Gloves...
Like, there's still a lot of aspects of Mickey Mouse.
You know how, like, you can make a, what's a good example?
A Frankenstein.
Yeah.
Because that's based on the Mary Shelley story.
But you can't make it look like Boris Karloff or Universal Gets Mad.
Abinormal!
Could be worse.
Could be raining.
Yeah.
And then it rains.
No tongues.
No tongues.
So I went to a party last night for a little while.
Oh, really?
Your parents had gone on a week's vacation?
They did.
And they left the keys to the brand new Porsche.
Huh.
And I went.
To the town.
You went to a... Well, I'm sorry.
Let's do the show.
Sure, sure, sure.
We'll figure out how to open source our mouths later.
Okay.
All right.
Good, good.
So you went to... Was it a New Year's party?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
In an apartment.
I went to an apartment party.
An apartment party.
An apartment party.
Part of the appeal of the apartment party.
Precious pals.
Precious pals.
Well, yeah, and I was able to go up on the roof of the building, and it's a building I've known for many, many, many, many, many, many years.
I probably drove past that building when I was five days old for the first time, so I have a pretty long association with it.
You got a history, and in some ways that history starts again yesterday.
Yeah, I went up on the roof of it, which was not really that spectacular.
No big surprises up there, but at least I can say I was there.
And this was a grown-up party.
Everybody at the party was grown-up.
Uh-huh.
And it was... Sorry.
That's like when you describe anything as being an adult thing.
Yeah, it was kind of a little bit of an adult party.
An adult party.
It didn't have any...
There's nothing especially sexy about it.
No, that's adulthood.
Am I right?
Yeah.
Boy, that's the side of the adult party they don't tell you about.
There's nothing sexy about adults.
You know what we do for foreplay?
I paint my house.
But it was a Mexico-themed party.
Okay.
The old country?
Whatever you had.
I have a collection of embroidered patches.
Oh, good.
I thought you were going to go just with the hat route.
I have a collection of hats.
I brought a sombrero for everybody.
I would go over to this section.
I think it's in the P's.
You go over to hats, non-problematic.
No, I have patches.
Patches are a kind of collection you can have that don't take up a ton of room.
You can just have a box and probably have a thousand patches in there.
Kind of like the patches you get if you're a scout, like a sew-on or iron-on.
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah, those used to be big when we were kids.
I know.
Oh, my God.
Did you ever have a vest or a shirt that was covered with patches?
No, no.
Part of my life, my life half-lived, is a lot of patches I could never figure out how to affix to anything, which is kind of a nice metonymy for my entire existence.
Oh, my God.
Sing it, sister.
Yeah.
I don't know how to do this.
Do you iron this one?
I don't know how to sew, and I hate asking for favors.
This is a number one problem of patches.
You need a certain amount of autonomy to do a patch on your own.
Every patch I have has three associated dreams that I've had for that patch.
Oh.
Right?
There's the denim vest that that patch might have gone on.
There's the cool sort of...
like Top Gun-y jacket that the patch might go on.
Oh, that would be great.
You've earned that.
Right, right.
But then I'm not a very good sewer.
Patches are hard to sew on.
Good reaper.
I am a good reaper.
Thank you.
Yeah.
2024.
Look out.
Look out.
Sorry, I dropped my salt shaker.
I had to write something.
I just said something funny.
I was going to write it down.
Did you throw it over your shoulder?
I'm going to get to that.
Okay.
All right.
So, number one, you got like a cool vest, like you're a warrior.
Yeah, right.
Like a biker.
Biker.
Or, you know, somebody cool.
So, when I was a kid, I did have like it was a track jacket.
That I had had, I guess I'd asked my mom to sew some patches on it.
But at the time, my patch collection was very small.
And so I had... That's such an interesting point, because that really does come to matter at a certain point.
It does, right?
How big your collection is.
That's true for anything you collect.
And some of them were from scouting, and some of them were rainbows.
And, you know, it was the 70s.
But I had a picture in mind of this...
of this outfit that was going to be covered with patches.
And so I told her, I kind of situated the patches like, I want this one here.
I want this one here.
I want this one here.
And she, she dutifully did it.
She was a loving mother.
Yeah.
So I had a track jacket that had like eight patches on it, but they were spread all over the jacket.
one in the center of the middle, one in the back.
Oh, I see.
Less like a lieutenant colonel and more like some kind of an airsats clown.
Yes.
Were they too diverse in how they were spread?
Were there some that were on a part that might be tucked in?
Yes.
That's probably on you.
Yeah.
It had an eight-year-old's
sense of kerning um where where it's like okay well that's at a certain age kerning is a commitment and this would have been this would have been great if i'd kept it up and if i had continued to add patches to it as i gained a life experience or got you know like beat into new levels of the gang or whatever but i i never added another patch to it so but i did wear it
But it never fully became like a... Did you feel when you wore it, did you feel like... I remember certain kinds of things, particularly a pair of JCPenney running shoes that I got in eighth grade, where I felt like I fully inhabited them.
There were certain things that, to use a phrase my grandmother would use, by the time they were gone, this thing did know me a nickel.
I wore them constantly, but also I instantly felt like
I don't know, to be honest, like cool and powerful.
Like there are things you can put on as a little kid to make you feel almost like a superhero.
And I love these running shoes.
Did you fully inhabit?
Did you feel like it was really your patchy jacket?
Your patchy jack?
You know, my jacket was a furry, like a teddy bear jacket.
Uh-huh.
It was like brown fur.
Sounds like something Sonny Bono would wear.
Except it wasn't furry.
It was fuzzy.
It was brown fuzz.
Like felt?
Except it was more furry than felty.
It was like a little bear.
It was a jacket of a little bear.
I had a teddy bear named Teddy.
And this jacket had a hood.
And it was kind of purple-brown.
And I loved that jacket.
And I wore it.
When I got it, it was too big for me.
And when they pried it from my hands, it was so too small for me.
I think I probably wore it from five to nine.
And it was really like an Adventure Time outfit for me.
I was really thin in it.
And, you know, why is he still wearing a hat with rabbit ears or whatever?
Because he's Finn.
Because he's Finn, exactly.
You're John and you got a cool track jacket.
I was John and I had a teddy bear jacket.
And I swear to you, if I saw one in my size today, I would buy it.
Of course you would.
Because I'd go right back, Merlin.
I'd be my little self again.
And it would be a big do-over.
I could do it all over.
It might give you insight into things that, I'm not saying it's magical per se, but it would give you a certain kind of a mindset state of mind.
That's your rosebud in some ways.
It would be a mindset state of mind.
Fuzzy rosebud, they call it.
That's an urban dictionary.
But I took a patch to this party that said Mexico.
on it and I and it was it was going to be a white elephant or something kind of situation like bring a present you know whatever then you and somebody else with another present go in the closet you know it's a it's a grown-up seven minutes in Mexico and and I handed it to the host and he was like I'm keeping this one for myself and I was like well all right then
And then I had that incredible experience that maybe you haven't had in a while, 55 years old, standing in an apartment in Capitol Hill, Seattle, trying to make small talk with people.
Like, so how do you know the – it was really crazy.
It was crazy.
Honestly, I was there too.
It's not just that you've changed.
It's like adults –
I mean, there's just so many things that change as opposed to like when you would have the, at least to me, sort of like easiness of just showing up somewhere and bringing a six pack or whatever.
Like, you know what I mean?
The sort of like, we're just going to do this thing.
It could be in a parking lot.
It could be at somebody's house.
It could be whatever.
And now everything feels like it has like throat clearing now.
And like you try not to talk about COVID because that's really still all I know how to talk about with people is things like COVID.
Yeah.
And like, you know, it's all weird.
And if you'd had your track jack, you could have rolled in there and just been like, you know, Mr. Guy.
Yeah.
It was a Capitol Hill.
That's no longer like strictly like a Castro type neighborhood.
That's just an upscale neighborhood, right?
Oh, no, no, no, no.
It is the radical youth neighborhood.
I think that, you know, it used to be the concentrated gay neighborhood.
But my host last night at one point looked around and said, there's not a single other gay person at this party.
And we all went, huh?
Huh.
And he, you know, like, because he's kind of a legendary host.
Uh, there were a couple of trans people, but there were no other gay people.
Yeah.
No other gay people.
And he was like, uh, uh, he just thought that that was worth remarking to the room.
And we all nodded like, isn't that interesting that you would have a party?
I have a big question coming in a second.
It's probably kind of obvious to the listener, but, um, about how many people we talking about talking in, talking dinner party sized.
Are we talking to get together size?
Um,
Are you playing like Ellen DeGeneres style party games?
What are you doing?
So on my way up the stairs, it's on the sixth floor of this building.
Walk up?
Well, I mean, I think there's an elevator, but the building is owned by an absentee landlord and they don't fix anything.
So I don't know if the elevator even works.
That's a lot of steps.
It's a lot of steps.
And so on the way up to the sixth floor, I was thinking.
That's like, what is that?
Sixth floor.
1530.
That's like several hundred steps.
Yeah, it was a blue.
You know, blue.
I mean, even in New York.
Did you rest on the way up?
I'm sorry, let me put that differently.
At what point did you rest?
I'm guessing around the fourth floor.
I'm embarrassed.
I'll stand up and finish.
I'm embarrassed to say how well you know the world that at the fourth floor landing, I said, look, I don't want to get there.
You know, these legs are mine.
Well, I just didn't want to roll up into the party and be winded and be like, hey, everybody, how's it going?
So I stopped and got my shit together.
Of course.
Hey, great to see you guys.
Happy New Year.
Happy New Year.
And that gives you an indication on my way up.
I was like, okay, the hall's going to be full of people, right?
It's going to be a party that overflows into the halls because this guy knows a lot of people.
And it's going to be packed in there.
It's going to be a super spreader event.
This is going to be really hard.
But I'm going to power through this for a variety of reasons.
Did your daughter's mother partner come?
No, no.
Because what I said to my daughter was,
Um, I'm going to come home before midnight.
I'm going to wake you up and we're going to celebrate New Year's.
And this was at her insistence, right?
She said, I'm, you know, I'm going to go to bed.
I just described it as what I told my daughter, but what it really was was what my daughter told me was that I was going to come home at midnight and wake her up and we were going to watch the fireworks on television.
And I said, yes, I will do that.
I'm just going to go downtown for, for a little break.
interlude an 8 p.m to 11 p.m party with some grown-ups and i got there and it wasn't there was no party in the hall and i went in and when i arrived nobody like sneaking sneaking a cigarette no no nope everybody's grown up at this point oh yeah um so then read the new york times yeah right god said god is dead
So I went in.
Don't you quote Elton John to me, you bastard.
There were 15 people there when I got there.
Not a present for your friends to open.
Technically, that's Bernie Toppin, but that's okay.
That's not what he is.
Yeah, but who are you, dad?
I was the guy with the Mexico patch.
That's my question.
In a minute, I do have a question about the theme.
Somebody had brought a bowl of guacamole that they had covered with crickets.
They'd actually brought dried crickets back from Mexico.
So there was a sophisticated centerpiece for conversations to start.
Like, oh, have you had a cricket?
That's the adult version of raisins.
Why do you put crickets on that?
What are you doing?
Do you want me to compliment you for doing that?
Why would you do that?
It's a Mexico party.
Is that really a canonical Mexican thing, is eating crickets?
I don't think so.
This gets back to my question.
How did this get chosen as a Mexico theme?
They got crickets.
Okay, but John, I'm just saying, you grab five random adults
in the King County area, and you say, throw a Mexico party, and people are going to ask questions.
Why is John throwing a Mexico party?
Well, what happens in Seattle?
Might be racist.
This may not be true in San Francisco, but there is a very big Seattle-Mexico connection, and I think it's because Alaska Airlines for the last, I don't know, 40 years...
has been just running these $100 junkets down to Mexico.
Oh, that's cool.
Okay.
So everybody here that doesn't have the time and patience to go one hour further has been to Mazatlan and they've been to, you know, they all have a spot.
Everybody I know has got a place in Mexico that they go every year.
And it's presented up here as kind of like, not a working class holiday, but kind of that.
No, no, no, but I understand.
It's not, I mean, like you've been on the JoCo cruise.
I've been to a junket in the Dominican Republic.
And that's just a couple off the dome where the whole time, no shade of lemonade, but I was like, ugh.
Where I was like, ugh, this really does, this does feel like a celebration of white people.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, and it's like, it's just, I guess I can see why people like those things.
As it turned out, I did not at all.
I could not.
That is not a... Even though there was a gravy fountain.
Oh, God, so much.
And what's it called?
The butt jammer?
Yeah, the butt jammer.
And you go in there.
But I guess what I'm saying is like, I do understand what you're saying.
It's not like going to, like, what's a jokey one?
Oh, Tuscany.
It's not like, oh, we're summering in Tuscany or something like that.
No, we're just going to buzz down to Mazatlan, wherever that is.
We're going to have a very modest Seattle holiday.
For our listeners who are in New Zealand or who live up above the Arctic Circle in Norway, they're going to roll their eyes at this when I say that for you and I living on the West Coast.
Yeah.
We're five hours from anywhere else.
Maximum of five hours.
We are very central.
And I don't mean central as in the disused time zone.
I mean, we are, in the same way that the East Coast likes to think of themselves as the center of the world in every way, including time zones, we are adjacent to many rooms.
Yes, but on the East Coast, you are 30 minutes from everywhere, right?
If you live in New York, you're 30 minutes from Brooklyn, and you're also 30 minutes from Pennsylvania.
You're also 30 minutes from, I don't know what, Virginia, right?
So everything's real close together.
L train, yeah.
And so, yeah, let's just take the L train to Virginia.
But in this case, this was a group of people.
A lot of them I knew, but I didn't know anybody well.
I knew the host well.
But everybody else, they're all from the writer community.
And so it's not.
But like not as in like the I aspire to be a writer and I journal, but as in like people who've been paid to do things professionally for over 10 years.
Yes, right.
These are writers who are like.
It's almost as bad as stand up comedians.
I mean, I actually had an encounter in the kitchen where someone said, did you.
uh oh no they said i should give you a copy of my latest book and i said i bought it and they said what i thought i went to the store and i bought it wow wow and they were like and they didn't even go oh like in rock and roll you'd go oh cool thanks they just went oh
And because they've got 25 books or whatever.
Well, yeah, and it feels like it does, it feels a little bit like, it's almost like with somebody, it would be like somebody going like, oh, yeah, I grew up next door to you.
And then you go, oh.
Like, there's really not that much to say about it, but you're like, I guess that had to happen at some point.
Yeah, not only did I buy your book, I read it.
In fact, I have a mental.
Well, let's not go crazy.
I have a mental picture of your book in my bed, half-finished.
Yeah.
Is that a pickup line?
I've got seven to ten books in my bed.
I really enjoyed your book.
You know where it would look better?
Crumpled up on my floor.
Oh, no.
In fact, oh, my God.
She is a gay woman, and so our host was sadly mistaken.
There was a gay person at his party.
Is she a secret gay?
But he doesn't consider her gay because she's a she.
Because he's old school.
He's old.
It's complicated business.
It's really a lot.
There's a lot to think about.
And there's a history.
But so there was a lot of that where I'm standing around with people I've known for years, but nobody that I'm really like, oh, I'm going to be over here in the corner with my bros.
And so a lot of that like... And like nobody where you go, oh my God, thank God you're here.
No, although there was one... At one point, I did... Somebody did walk in and I was like, oh, this is fun.
At least, you know... I mean, it was fun.
It was a fun part.
No, no, no, I know what you mean.
But like one feels... I mean, I'm...
we're both capable of extroversion in short bursts.
We're like Ultraman, you know, before the lights start blinking, we're fine.
But like, you know, there is still a sense of like, you feel a little bit moored if there's somebody where you're like, but you've kind of put another way, maybe it's somebody, oh my God, it's somebody I haven't seen in a while that I'm really glad can be my track jacket for the night.
Yeah, somebody that I've been to a baseball game with, right?
Where we can stand.
And I actually said to somebody at one point, have we known each other all these years and never gone to a second location together?
And the person, rather than go, yep, that's just how life is in the city, they said, what do you mean go to a second location together?
And I was like, all right, well, I'm not going to, you know, this wasn't like, I'm not challenging you.
I'm just saying, you know, we've been walking these streets.
Yeah, yeah, singing the same old song.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I think what happened with the crickets was that somebody – I think the great gift of a bowl of crickets – At a party.
That sounds like a Robin Hitchcock song.
Is that somebody, not necessarily the person that brought the crickets, but somebody can park themselves next to the crickets and kind of take –
Then they they get some of those crickets.
Well, they get the benefit, the conversational benefit of being the one that's like, hey, did you notice there are crickets on that?
And then they get to have the person say, because this is a grown up party.
A lot of people are going to want you to know, oh, I've had crickets before.
Yeah.
You just say like, like how droll.
Yeah.
Right.
Or like one of the things that everybody found a way to say was, oh, it's a good source of protein.
I had to put crickets on your mom.
But it's not like bringing crickets to a high school party.
Oh, I see.
Nobody's going to be like, ooh.
At this, everybody's like, oh, I have crickets.
Or if you had like a haunted house.
Yeah.
Plunge your hands into the brains.
But yeah, so it's like everybody kind of had to be game and eat at least one cricket.
Crickets are deceased.
Is that right?
Well, they're all, they're very crispy.
They're very delicious.
Great source of protein.
Okay, look, you can just sit there with fucking, you can sit there and go like, oh, it's real normal to bring crickets to a Mexico party.
I'm going to continue to interrogate this just a little bit.
Sure, yours is all the way back and still at Mexico party.
I'm from Hamilton County, Ohio.
I ain't had a lot of crickets in my food.
No.
No, no.
It's part of a whole class of animals that we generally tend to think of as something that's not food.
Right.
But you guys are eating frogs and rabbits all the time in live.
And we work from candle can't.
I spilled a lot of salt just now.
So if you hear this noise, it's because I just spilled so much salt.
Get some over your shoulder before the time limit.
John, is it over your left shoulder?
Is that right?
What's what's the order of operations for this if I get it wrong?
I can fuck up my old 24.
He's boy That's something I have in my right hand and throw it over my left shoulder.
That seems an awkward gesture though No, it's going across your face.
Well, see this is the thing people don't understand about cowboys It's why do they keep their their pistol in the holster the way they do now when we were children It looked like with your right hand you go to your right side a lot of times I think you cross over
Okay, no, this is something maybe I didn't know I was curious about until now, but have you considered how you would carry your pistol if and when you had to carry a pistol?
Not a lot, but I mean, I've thought about it just a little bit.
It's part of a larger class of thinking about things I probably never do.
But when I do think about things like that, I try to think about it.
I don't think about one of those guys who's like, I've never been in a fight, but I'm pretty sure I could win a fight.
I try to think about it more like a normal person who would go like,
Could I get like a ladies Derringer and have it somewhere?
Just, you know, I don't even think I get to protect somebody.
I would need some warning.
I would take it out.
And then I would show you how it works.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
You've thought about this?
Like, sorry, excuse me.
If when you're called into some kind of secret service, like where you would keep your service revolver.
well this is one of those i remember sometime earlier this year there was that thing going around like how often does a guy think about the roman empire and then uh and there were all these kind of i don't know what tick tock memes where somebody where some lady was like hey honey how often do you think about the roman empire and from the other room he goes i was thinking about it just now and it became like a funny thing like ha ha ha men all think about the roman empire and when ladies never do
I do feel – throwing this out to the community of listeners here, I bet you there is a significant percentage of them who have –
given some thought to how they would carry a pistol if they had to.
And then there's going to be a lot on, on a lot of things.
Well, sure.
I mean, you have to pick a pistol first, but I bet you there's going to be a larger number.
If you're the kind of guy who walks around and always carries a pistol, like you'd have to really think about that.
But if you're going to the beach, are you Morgan Freeman going to the beach?
Like, where do you put your pistol?
Oh,
Yeah, I bet pistol carriers have lots of ways of working through that, right?
They bring a fanny pack or something.
You can try different things because gun people love their guns.
They probably have lots of guns.
But I'm talking about like open carry, like a pistol.
I mean, I guess, yeah, carry one in your jacket pocket.
You can carry that in that really fruity way people like to hold them.
Oh, where they go to the convenience store or to a local restaurant, but they have an AR-15 on?
Yeah, but even the IDF.
They hold it in that real fruity way where it looks really drippy.
Oh, so that's the new way.
The new way of carrying it where it's like a bass guitar.
It looks really gay.
Yeah.
Well, where it's big, it's up, it's high, right?
But it's different.
It's not like in Vietnam.
Oh, it is not like in Vietnam.
Oh, and I think I very much imprinted on how they carried rifles in World War II movies.
which was like slung way low kind of like jimmy page's guitar and then the contemporary way yeah now they got it all up under their arms like like jacko pastorius it's very different it looks very strange to me still yeah it's really really fruity i keep saying that because i i want them to know i think they look really fruity because that's not how they want to look
I see.
It's not a disparagement against your writer friend or any of their friends.
It's a disparagement against those guys that think you're in a gun.
Makes them look cool.
Makes them look really fruity.
What I've noticed.
They're all dressed the same, too.
It's very difficult in the world today for people to appreciate satire.
Oh, doctor.
It's really hard.
You know what I said to somebody on the internet the other day?
I wouldn't tell you this except I thought it was really smart and an encapsulation of something I've been thinking for a long time.
My anecdote, I was going to tell you in a second, is how my kid stayed up till midnight.
We'd already lost mom, but he stayed up and we said happy new year and then he went to bed.
But we watched, we got through the first season of House, the TV show, in I think three days.
Oh.
22 episodes and we're very into house right now so you're doing five episodes six episodes at a time we're doing runs we're doing runs and then he goes and he reads a book he read 32 books this year and so we'll do we'll do uh do do a little run and uh and and you know uh that kind of thing um and uh wait what was i telling you this i was telling you this because of holding a gun
Oh, man.
Oh, no, satire.
And I was saying how I really liked House.
And it is kind of a bummer that, do you remember how Bosom Buddies had up that Billy Joel song as the theme song?
And then in reruns, they changed it.
Oh, because they couldn't afford it?
Well, just they WKRP'd it.
Like, they didn't want to pay for all those rights.
So the thing is, the problem is, I don't know if you've ever seen the TV show House, but it has a very memorable song by Massive Attack.
Oh!
That really cool trip-hop song.
I think it's called Teardrop or something like that.
I've never seen House.
They switched it out and put it in like a substitute song.
Boo.
Yeah.
And...
And somebody said, I said, I'm really enjoying House.
And somebody, no shade, no lemonade, but the person said, he did something morally reprehensible in season X. And so I couldn't watch it anymore.
Boo.
See, that kind of response, you know.
Boo.
Did you really think that out?
Like, what?
Okay.
You know what I said?
But wait, you never reply to those people.
What's going on with you?
You know what I said?
It was 2023.
I said, I feel like we learn more from bad people than we do from good people.
Oh, you twisted it on him.
John, did you sit with that for just a second?
Oh, yeah, you flipped the script.
Because here's the thing.
You just pointed out the thing about satire and how we're not supposed to do satire anymore because it's always exactly what it seems to be.
I said this to Madeline last week.
You know, Jonathan Swift wouldn't have been able to write a modest proposal today.
Don't you know how many Irish children could eat in every year?
Yeah.
No, no, no.
Must be nice.
Listen, he hurt a lot of people.
Jonathan Swift hurt a lot of people.
Did you really read it?
Because I was doing a different thing.
You learn more from bad people than you do from good people.
Yeah, but the reader of that tweet thought you were referring to house.
Yeah, well...
Well, but like, that's the twist.
That's the little, the, the, how am I supposed to respond to that credulously?
Oh, you know, actually, I don't even know what you're referring to except for the five terrible things house does the break on the numerous Billy and I have just really started noticing how often they have breaking in and everything on that show.
There's a lot of breaking in it.
There's, there's so much stuff.
He just stabbed a guy with something that would cause him to almost die in order to get him to urinate.
In an episode because they had to get urine that was freshly captured after he had an attack.
So Faust does a lot of pretty dicey stuff and it is sometimes very amusing.
I'm not cheering along with House necessarily.
Sure.
But in season seven there, he did that one thing.
Oh, reprehensible.
Yeah.
And you just couldn't watch anymore.
Sorry to derail you, John.
I just wanted to point out that I said something smart on the internet, and it is apropos.
It is related to satire, because I feel like, and I'm not even trying to fucking learn anything.
But when I do want to learn something, or I have the openness to learn something, it's not because, okay, so let's flip it around.
I'm sorry, because now I'm angry.
Flip it, flip it.
I'm going to reverse it.
Flip it.
Are you implying then that you watch TV shows where you really like the people who do it and that's a good TV show?
Are you watching Family Matters?
What are you doing?
No, you know what?
They're watching zombie movies.
I'm back to zombie movies.
Everybody watches zombie movies, and they think that, and then people do terrible, terrible, terrible things to zombies.
My friend Max, Max Stempkin had a theory about this, and I don't think it's even a theory.
Like, because you see those, you know, those ridiculous dumb maps that are like, most popular candy bar in Texas.
Or like, you know, what people look at on Pornhub.
I almost said Kornhub, and now I really want there to be a Kornhub.
Why is there not a corn hub?
There must be a corn hub.
Okay, because we're going to need to return to that because I think we might be getting rich in the next year.
By the end of this episode, one of our listeners will have gotten corn hub.
You know it's already there.
We'll get corn hub.io or something.
Corn hub.limo.
But no, I'm not even trying to be helpful here, but I am like, you know what?
You know what the real lesson here?
Take a minute is and ask yourself, in your wildest fantasy, not about me, Merlin, man, but just in general, in your wildest fantasy, how did that go well?
When you said he did something morally reprehensible halfway through this one season.
Like, am I supposed to go, thank you, you've given me much to think about?
What the fuck am I supposed to say to that?
You could have also just skipped it.
Or, you know, you could have found a way to make it funny.
Sure, just be quiet is generally what the rule is now.
That's right.
The adult Mexicans are speaking.
What happened?
Los adultos.
When was the last time that you, on the internet, because I remember very distinctly where you were like, I'm not doing it anymore.
I'm not talking to people.
Oh, that.
Oh, I respond to people.
I'll run the Mastodon.
I'll talk to people because they're all just dorks.
I mean this because there was a time when you would have done a John where you said, hey, what's wrong with you?
Why don't you go fuck yourself?
Just to clarify here, let's generalize this pattern a little bit.
It's not any kind of base first level.
I watched this really good YouTube video about the levels of thinking and awareness that's kind of got me...
thinking a lot about this but like it's like oh i'm just i'm just some fucking dumb idiot and like i just say stuff and then i hope people agree with me it's like no i have a theory of mind i understand how other people think about other people thinking about how they see them thinking about other people like i'm aware of that and if you think that's weird that's because you're operating in a much lower level ah
You're vibrating at a very low level if all you think about is how to get your nut off and be near the watering hole by three.
There's a deeper level to this.
In my theory of mind, I do find myself thinking things like, had you thought about that?
The very wide general pattern to this is...
if you like, if that had gone great, how would the world be different now?
Yeah.
Right.
Am I supposed to thank you?
I mean, I'm not even mad.
I understand.
Don't put it in the paper that I'm mad because I'm not mad, but I am.
It is, it is funny to me when people are like, and I'm just like, Oh my God, uh, this, this TV show on Showtime called the curse.
It's the most interesting thing on TV right now.
And then somebody responds and goes, um,
I watched part of the first episode, and I didn't watch it anymore.
No, it made me uncomfortable.
No, no, no, but even that, where you could go, okay, okay, let's go with that, let's go with that.
But can you make that funny?
Can you make that interesting?
Rather than just, it's the equivalent of saying, it's like describing your BM to somebody.
Oh, yeah.
No, but it's a broad pattern, John.
No, I see what you're saying.
It's not that I want to, it's like, yes, at a certain point when I was vibrating at a much lower level, when I had more thetans, I was vibrating at a level where I would be like, hey, you just made me sad for a minute, and I yell at them, right?
Yeah, sure, sure.
And then sometimes I would be the way that I have been, and I would be just ceaselessly cruel sometimes, and this still happens sometimes, sometimes I take the bit and triple it.
Yeah.
I love to take the bit and triple it.
You do?
You're a ceramicist.
I mean, that's what ceramicists do.
I am a ceramicist, and I believe in wabi-sabi.
Also, I believe in America.
And if you'd come to me then, these people would be suffering right now.
Oh, they would.
It would.
I remember.
I remember.
I believe in America.
I remember this well.
Well, you know, so it's a broad pattern of like of like of either misunderstanding, misapprehension or just like, you know, like even like, you know, let's take a general one, which is I have had occasion to think about a lot in the last month or so, which is let's just call it complaining about something.
Where, like, let's say there's something where you're dissatisfied with how something is going and you'd like it to be different.
So you're going to, as we say, complain about it.
There's a lot of times to complain about something.
Like, in the sense of, like, hey, I think there's something here that's been overlooked and, like, this is bad.
Or, like, you said you would tighten this bolt on my car and you didn't.
I don't mean complaint as having, like, a negative valence.
But, like, I do often ask myself before I, again, broad pattern, complain about something is, like, and then that will do what?
Yeah.
Yeah, right, right.
That's a good question you're always asking.
Well, I think it is because then a lot of times I'm just bringing more sorrow on myself because now, to use my phrase, now it's a whole thing and I've made it a whole thing.
And it's just like, you know, can't you bring something into the world that's going to make Merlin happy?
Well, I'm so I think about this now a lot because because the algorithms have changed.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
And they're not they're not showing you anything except what they're feeding you now.
They're not interested in showing you what your friends are talking about.
They're just pushing videos according to what you watched last.
And so I'm seeing all you got all those baseball highlights.
Well, yeah.
And so now, any time I spend online, I'm just watching what some AI is trying to get me to watch in order to sustain engagement.
And they're not really that good at it yet.
No, no, no.
So it continues to be people like, can you believe this curveball?
And then I watch a guy throw a curveball.
And I'm like, I'm not really the baseball guy that you think I'm.
Is this like a dog meeting a Gulf War veteran or anything like that?
Do you get sweet things or do you get like Russian life hacks?
So for some reason last week, I was getting a lot of videos of teenage girls with unbroken colts, young boy horses.
Teenage Girls.
Unbroken Colts sounds like such a problematic independent film.
Unbroken Colts.
And so what the video is.
Christian Schaal in Unbroken Colts.
There's like a horse that's very sprightly.
Oh, it's a horse that hasn't been made into a house horse yet.
That's right.
It's still an outside horse.
It's a frisky horse.
And the horse is doing frisky things.
And the teenage girl comes over and does a kind of horse whisperer on it.
And then gets up on the horse.
And the point of the people posting the video was, look at our daughter, you know, our comely young cowgirl.
Like, who's young but has, like, developed this expertise.
Because a lot of Internet videos, let's be honest, at least some of the classics over the years, whatever country or state or wherever it comes from, you're like, oh, my God, that's something...
I never learned how that existed, let alone how to be a master of it.
You watch somebody like, honestly, this is why I watch things like South Korean street food.
I love to watch how people do things in different places.
And in that case, it's just a sweet thing.
It's like, here's my kid who's not old enough to drive, but has figured out how to domesticate a horse.
And so, you know, for a long time we were told, or we were telling each other, don't read the comments, right?
But now, because of these things.
This comes up every week now.
Because of these things, I don't have any investment.
You've got armor now.
They can't get near you.
Well, but also it's not about me.
No, it's about the horse.
So I'm going to read the comments.
Of course.
And they follow, they have now systematized to such a degree that I really feel like the comments have to be AI too.
But what they are is the first comment is always, I can't believe the comments on this post.
That's the highest rated comment.
So then you're like, oh, what are they?
The second one is that horse is in pain.
That's like somebody that goes to a bar to eat peanut shells off the floor.
What an odd thing to do.
Or to eat crickets off of the guacamole.
Oh, buenos dias.
But the next one is that horse is in pain.
I can't believe you're torturing that horse.
Oh, my God.
Exactly.
Remember the joke?
I made this joke two weeks ago about the whole, like, I can, I mean, like, oh, you look at something in comments and you go, like, I can tell your dog isn't vegan from his eyes.
Yeah, that's right.
The kind of shit people say that's just like, are you fucking kidding me?
Or like, honestly, it's people who like, it's frequently medical things, where it's like, I can tell that your daughter has an obese ankle.
Right, or a lupus or something.
It's not Lupus.
But in this instance, and this is true in every instance, right?
Then there are 15 replies where it's like, obviously, you've never seen a horse before because this is a happy horse.
You can tell by its ears.
But they always start with... Obviously, you've never seen a Lipizzan or an Appaloosa or whatever the fuck.
This is not the same thing.
This is different.
Yeah, you don't fucking know anything, you hick.
Yeah, exactly.
And then the next comment is, why doesn't she have a helmet on?
Because that girl is going to follow up that horse and she's going to die and have a brain injury.
And then the rest of the thread... You don't see the daughters that didn't survive.
The rest of the thread is people going, well, back in my day, we never had helmets.
And the other people that are like, well, I sustained a traumatic brain injury...
And that's why I am on social security.
And then somebody else that's like that horse is in pain.
Yeah.
How can you be doing that?
And that's disgusting.
Why don't you let the horse ride you?
Exactly.
Why aren't the horses free in the forest?
Like horses deserve to be.
Thank you.
And so I read the comments and I'm like,
And then I go back and watch the video where it's just some teenage girl, you know, like jumping on a horse.
Just being a person.
And then I go to the next one, right, which is some other version of that.
Like, oh, somebody's rehabbing like an emu with a broken leg and the emu likes to come and cuddle with them in bed.
And then the first one is like, emos carry disease.
How can you be subjecting your family to emo disease?
And then the next one is like, why aren't you wearing a helmet?
And I just go, okay, there's zero new information here, right?
Like,
everyone participating in this, who are they talking to?
I mean, like there's, there's a bit, I, gosh, I did a parody about this a long time ago, but like, this is a phenomenon that a lot of us noticed in the early and mid two thousands was like, it's like, you know, like you, you, you're following your nose around and sometimes you're Googling for stuff and people would land on something like forum posts or live journal.
And like, it became very funny cause it was so, it was just so fucking funny when people would be searching for say Oprah,
And then they land on something that mentions Oprah and they just start talking like Oprah's there.
Oh, and it's, and it's you talking to lonely sandwich about Oprah in a live journal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's, it's, but like, this was the thing that you would see sometimes is that people like people would be confused or, or for that matter, like, like, like, like somebody puts up a YouTube video of like, uh, of somebody, uh, breaking their cult and they, and then like somebody goes, Oh my God,
um you know oh you know have you ever seen that movie uh the horse whisperer the actress has such good feet and these are acting like kind of like talking like the actress with the feet is there right right and it's the way the way drill used to post all those tweets where people were like turn off cancel account
Somebody help me with my budget.
My family is dying.
How do I get this to talk?
Right, right, right.
What's my password?
But I don't know.
It is funny.
You kind of can't help, but it perhaps has always been a sign of being, what is the phrase people use, deeply online, whatever that phrase is.
We were like, oh, God, you're such a noob.
You don't even know Oprah's not here.
But, like, people talking to people in the YouTube video, people talking, like, to the horse.
Like, are you addressing the child?
Are you addressing the horse?
Are you addressing the person who posted the video?
Or, like, are you just mostly just, like, just farting long and loud?
And what it brings me to wonder is do we not now...
recognize that there's nothing to be gained by giving everyone a voice.
Nothing.
That was a good experiment.
Let's give everyone a voice.
And we let it play out.
We're 10 years into it now.
And there's absolutely 100% of the evidence is that not everyone needs a voice in the public square, right?
And in fact, it benefits no one, right?
No one is in the comments of any of these videos learning anything, growing, being better.
They don't feel better from having been there.
And we allied the most basic materialist fact that people used to just be so mad at me when I would say this.
But there's a reason I turned off comments on everything.
There's all that stuff.
You know why people have comments on a website, I used to say?
People go like this.
They go, and they make the hand at me.
And here's the thing.
You know why people have comments on a site?
Because it ensures three page views.
Three page views.
Yeah.
Oh, because then people read the comments.
Well, well, no, at least you go and you look at the thing.
You hit the button.
You start typing.
You hit it again.
So even if all you do is almost read the article, I mean, that's at least two or three right there.
Is this monetizing?
Are we talking about monetizing?
Yeah, I think this is a form of monetizing.
I see.
I see.
Um, but do you follow?
And then like you, though, you reload to see what people said about your comment, like a story that you never actually, you couldn't be fucked to actually read and synthesize and integrate into your understanding of the world.
Like, you know, you just, you just saw the headline and saw it was about vaccines and got mad.
Right.
I never think about monetizing.
That's... But I mean, but like... And the thing is that nobody wants to talk about it because it reveals the ugliness at the heart of almost all of this, which is like this whole corrupt advertising economy that is about not... Basically...
existentially non-significant page views for existentially non-significant items like it's and i'm not going to be so dumb as to go like oh it's bots writing things for bots and all that kind of stuff no it's just more like i mean it's the reason everybody does all this stuff again to quote that movie from what we quoted in our very first episode uh rules of the game the terrible thing in life is that everyone has their reasons and
Everyone has their reasons for all that shit.
But, like, it bums me out that we never stop and say, like, well, then why is that?
Why does YouTube keep pushing people to make these phone-style short videos that are uniformly awful and inappropriate for a lot of channels?
Hey, you know what?
Most of the things I watch are about films and music.
And, like, a film, by and large, a YouTube channel about films, do they really need to make a short that's in a phone aspect ratio?
No.
Right?
Right.
But you got to do it because that's the grind and it really helps people discover the show.
And for what?
So you can sell more ads.
And I'm not against ads.
I've made a lot of money selling ads.
Sure, for sure.
But like, fucking care.
Like, do you care about that?
Because it really just seems like you're just here to grind vulnerable people into a set of behaviors that is not helping anybody.
And the voice that, I don't want to say the voice they've been given, but the voice that they've claimed is now being used in the service of people
Nothing but causing confusion and delay.
Yeah, well, now I understand.
You know, we're coming up on the third year anniversary of Bean Dad.
Yeah.
And I didn't even send out my cards.
Right, exactly.
And I'm just trying to think how to celebrate it.
Sure.
And one of the things you're causing to me to remember, it's crickets.
Should have been.
It's not crickets.
What I remember now, just as you're saying this, is that there were people writing me at the time saying, how are you going to monetize this?
You should be monetizing this.
Oy vey.
And I was like, look, I got other things to think about right now, but thanks.
As soon as I get off the horn with Child Protective Services, I'll have a good laugh about this.
Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about, but thanks for writing.
And what they were thinking was that this was some kind of YouTube prank or something where I was driving engagement.
Because this happens on YouTube.
You know where this happens is on, I understand, I'm glad to believe it's on makeup YouTube.
There's just beefs about beef.
There's just people who are just the whole YouTube channel.
And then there are YouTube channels.
And forgive me if I'm a little out of step on this.
I think this is probably the worst.
Then there's people who just comment on other people's like YouTube drama and, and whether Jacksepticeye, whatever that is, is like divorced from this person who was in a, in a throuple with this makeup influencer.
And then what they said about, about the product placements and like stealing this person's ideas.
Talk about an adult party.
That is a, that is a, that is, you know what?
You show up looking for big to taste, but what you actually get is that welcome to adulthood.
There's no big to taste.
Hmm.
What there are is people who are upset about how makeup influencers are impacting the ecosystem.
And is that driving engagement to their YouTube channel?
I don't know if it's driving engagement.
I think it's at least letting engagement ride on the back of its banana seat.
Sure, sure.
Well, it's engagement all the way down.
That's true.
But I do feel like as we go into 2024, 2024 as people keep saying to me, I say happy 2024 and people say 2024 back to me.
I don't understand the words you just said.
And I'm like 2024?
I just said 2024.
Is there –
I don't need to contract it, but I like it.
2024, it rolls off the tongue.
It's better than 2004.
We didn't have a way to say 2004.
You can't make those funny glasses you wear on New Year's Eve.
They're not as funny.
2024.
Well, it's hard to see through the two.
2000, 2001, those were banter years for funny glasses.
I know from the 3D printing grind, these get very popular this time of year on the 3D printing sites, and the 2024 glasses are very dispiriting.
Oh, yeah.
Well, how are you going to see through a four?
How's your right eye going to see through a four?
Or see through a two.
Yeah, right.
I saw somebody the other day in 2024 glasses.
Did you mean 2024?
2024 glasses.
I didn't understand what you were talking about, John.
I know.
It's very confusing for people of a certain age.
Hang on.
Do you mean... Why does she not have a helmet on, this girl in the glasses?
And look at that foal.
What is it, a colt?
The colt is in pain.
You can tell from the ears.
And that's a boy with balls.
A gelding.
That's when they take the equipment off the back of the hinders?
Yeah, they do the thing with the stuff.
What's Palomino?
It's a spotted horse.
It's a splotchy horse.
What about old paint?
That's a paint-covered horse.
Okay.
See, I know all about this stuff because I live in the West.
I can see from here that there's lead in that paint.
But what I wonder is... What I wonder...
In 2024, are we going to start recognizing that we need to go back to first principles?
We need to go small.
We need to go – you only need to – you never need to – well, I –
I know one thing you could do in general, both in terms of consumption, production, all of those kinds of things.
And I know this, I don't mean this in quite the ugly way that it sounds, but there needs to be more scarcity.
More scarcity.
Thank you, Merlin.
And I'm not trying to be normative.
I'm not trying to say like, you know, oh, make the bell curve happen.
But I mean like you're not allowed that many spicy remarks in one hour.
You're allowed like two of those a month.
Okay, two spicy remarks a month.
I think that's a good thing.
Make it count, man.
Treat it like ammunition.
So either don't comment or leave positive comments.
Well, I mean, I guess the West Coast way I would say it is leave appropriate comments.
Like we say in Buddhism, you'd say right thinking, right concentration.
In this case, right comments.
A guy I know on Facebook posted something yesterday where it was a picture of ye old-timey people.
And he – his point was – and this is a smart guy, a writer guy.
The point was, look at how uncomfortable these people were.
I'm so glad we live in an era where we can wear sweatpants on airplanes.
And he was not being funny.
And then the comments under it were all people like –
A certain kind of person will read that, and depending on what the color of their crystal is, could choose to understand, not understand, misinterpret, or mangle what that guy's actually trying to say, which is ultimately, isn't it nice that ladies don't have to wear corsets to go to the toilet anymore?
That's kind of what he's saying, right?
Because Facebook can be a more supportive place in certain places.
Yes.
This whole thread was people underscoring this like, oh, I'm so grateful that I can wear sandals with no socks.
on airplanes now and in the past you know in 1850 people would have had to have worn shoes on airplanes and it just is such a gift to us all that we can now just go it's one thing to have the option and it's another thing to do it this is what you just said
Well, except they each – everybody in the thread was like, yeah, I just wear a G-string with my dick out to the supermarket now and thank God because these are my – this is a great gift of modernity.
I wear a crock on my dick and I hop.
And so I –
read it and of course I have strong feelings about this and I wanted to reply and I wanted to reply by saying you fucking people you fucking people with your bare feet on airplanes you're not going to have just one comment about that and so I was like that's going to be a 12 comment night for you and I was sitting there like okay okay it's a half rack of comments and I really did do the Merlin on it where I was like what am I trying to get out of this
am I going to, am I going to change any minds today?
Am I going to make one less person wear sandals on an airplane?
No.
And as I, as I, as I composed my reply, I was, I was deleting it as I wrote it.
I think that's so wholesome in two ways, John.
I mean, I think it's one thing just because you wrote it doesn't mean you have to post it.
Yep.
And like, and, and sometimes it's in the midst of writing something that we realize it doesn't need to be written.
And that's part of the writing process.
That's right.
That's exactly right.
And I didn't, and I closed whatever device it was that I was composing this, like, you, my friend, or my nominal peer group, you are what's wrong with the world.
I closed my device, having not told them they were what's wrong with the world, and I felt a great lightness.
I felt like I was leaving 2023 without having earned a half rack of shit.
Doesn't it make you feel – there's this word I've used a lot for a while, but I'm using a lot especially right now to try and explain something.
And it's a poor choice because it means a lot to me, but I do need to explain it.
And that word is integrity.
And when I say integrity, personal integrity, I don't mean brand.
I don't mean how you seem to other people.
I mean in an older sense of like wholeness, where integrity more as in integrated –
And that makes me feel well integrated when I catch myself doing that.
And then I get to even have a little chuckle with myself about it, which makes me feel really good.
I think part of the problem, and we could go on for hours, days, about the loss or lack of context in so much of the way we have the opportunity to talk to each other now.
I mean, I'm phrasing that carefully.
I'm avoiding saying like, oh, yeah, there's no context online because I don't know.
I think it's kind of always been true, but really more true than ever.
There's very little context.
There's very little that you can assume people understand about or try to understand for that matter about your motives or whatever it is, which which can be really frustrating.
But like if I'm going to make it real dumb and easy to understand, which is like it comes down to chanting.
And like, this is a very funny bit on TV show Parks and Recreation.
There's this one guy at the hilarious local Pawnee town meetings who like always is trying to start a chant about something, you know, like, you know, the only kind of sandwich should be ham and mayonnaise.
Ham and mayonnaise.
Ham and except for turnip.
Except for turnip.
If you guys need a comfort show, oh my goodness, that's such a good show.
Okay, but here's the thing.
You know the level of subtlety most people are comfortable with?
It's this.
Let's go, Oakland!
That is about the level of context and subtlety that most people are okay with.
If you can't clap and shout it, so, like, what are you gonna do?
You're gonna be in there, like, well, if you're me, you fucking, you roll into that thread, and you're like, well, actually, like, I think it's great that we have the option to, like, not have to dress up.
But, like, you know, but, like, I'm grossed out by people's feet, or whatever.
Or, like, I think it's disgusting when people, you know, whatever.
So, like...
The thing is, though, obviously I'm not putting that well, which is maybe part of my problem.
But if you can say that, can you rephrase that, please, as let's go, Oakland?
Let's go, Oakland.
You know what I'm saying?
But isn't that kind of what it feels like sometimes?
Basically, if it cannot be summarized in a chant, it's not a thing that should go online.
Closed-toed shoes are polite.
Closed-toed shoes are polite.
Oh, it becomes a new form of meter.
In public.
Yeah, right.
It could be like Milton or Shakespeare or something.
Close-toed shoes are polite in society.
That's a little jazzy.
They help people not be gross.
Now do it with Mexican crickets.
You know, it means if your butt doesn't smell, it's nicer on an alien.
What just happened?
Is that Monk?
Zap-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick.
Yeah.
Would you do that phonetically on Facebook?
Phonetically?
Well, see, no, because I'm backing out.
I'm like, nope, nope, nope, nope.
You can upload a MIDI file.
I don't care if she has a helmet.
I don't care if the horse is upset.
I mean, this is one of the other things.
I don't care if your dog is upset.
The dog is weird.
You think the dog has lupus because you can see it inside?
It's not lupus.
I don't care.
I don't care.
I don't care if the dog is sick.
I don't know these people.
Never stop shutting the fuck up.
I don't care if this emu is biting you and it's not a friend.
It's a precious angel.
Why don't you appreciate that?
It's a precious angel.
You know what?
I feel I'm just like my mom.
We don't even name cats on the farm.
They just live under the crisis.
My responses to a lot of cute things are almost as subtle as as let's go Oakland.
But because I'm saying it to people who know me or, you know, I know my bit.
Like Christina Warren just posted a photo of an incredibly cute baby in their family.
And in all caps, I said, bring it to me now!
Oh, bring it to me now.
Can I pet that dog?
Hi, mister, is that dog for anyone?
Can I pet that dog?
Maybe that ain't you!
Let's go, emus.
Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.
Bring me that baby.
Or like, I've been obsessed with this watering hole in Namibia.
It's a live stream.
Oh, of wildebeests.
Wildebeests, oryx, zebras.
And do they, and then crocodiles come out and get them?
No crocs yet.
Mostly, there's a lot of oryx.
But, you know, I just, there's no, why do you watch that?
Well, you know.
Sigh.
So I like to say, you know, it's like people always asking like why you do something why you don't do something, right?
Sure.
And I always like to say, well, why am I not a potted fern?
You know, why am I doing or not doing fucking anything?
You think you've got a reason for fucking?
Well, why did you just say that?
What's your fucking problem?
Yeah, exactly.
Don't you have a wife?
People are always asking DMC, what does it mean?
And it's just like, right.
D's for never dirty and MC's for mostly clean.
Well, DMC's got a beef to settle.
He's not Hansel.
He's not Gretel.
Yeah.
Jay's a winner, not a beginner.
Others get fat and he gets thinner.
This is what the internet used to be.
This is what... Let's go rap music.
Now, Peter Piper, Pink Peckle, Ramat Ron, he fell down.
That's his heart.
Jack, we nimble.
What, nimble?
And he was quick.
Yeah, see?
And they had to stop on the fourth floor just to check their breath.
Rick Van Winkle fell to hell asleep.
This bitch is my recital.
I think it's very... You know, I listened.
Rock a rhyme, that's right on time.
Tricky to rock a rhyme, to rock a rhyme, that's right on time.
It's tricky.
How is it?
Tricky.
Tricky.
Tricky, tricky.
Boy, that's a really good record.
I listened to that record more than a couple times in 1987.
Yeah, you know, when rap music comes on the radio.
Oh, boy.
And sometimes I will know the rhymes.
And so as I'm driving along...
Oh, like, I can do huge swaths.
Well, I used to know it all, but huge swaths of, like, for example, Mama Said Knock You Out.
I used to know, like, every line of that.
I'll do, and I do it, I do the white dad driving to school.
You do the hubba-dubba-dub, dibba-dub-dub?
No, I do the deadpan rap-along.
Oh, you just stare straight ahead.
Yeah, because I'm not... I'm not throwing shapes or signs.
No, no, no.
I'm not the dad that's like, yo, yo.
Oh, you don't turn your make-believe cap backwards or anything like that?
I don't.
I just do the rhyme, and I do it just dead on with the artist, but in just a guy driving his kid to school way.
And my daughter's always amazed, and she's like, so how do you know...
this first of all but also like where she's noticing that there's a cutoff
where there is a lot of rhyming music that I don't know.
My ability to rap along goes way down after Wu-Tang Clan, for example.
Yeah, right.
And, you know, for me, yeah, somewhere in the mid to late 90s, I start to... Like, maybe you could do some, like, you could do maybe some Puff, not Puff Daddy, but like... No, I don't know any of that.
No, no, no, no, no, but like, you know, Call Me Big Papa kind of stuff.
Like, some of the classic stuff, and obviously you love your Dr. Dre.
Sure.
I mentioned to Billy last night, we were watching something and I heard this...
i said you know and because like they were doing the intro they do the fake intro to house and it's not the usual massive attack and i was like in the second season i'm like you know that's actually kind of more of a dr dre keyboard and he goes yeah yeah i agree i said you know john roderick had a track on his first album where someone is credited with playing the dr dre keyboard yes i did i can do this it's not scent of lime it's fuck me oh shit fuck
God damn it.
Go, go, go.
I can wait.
It's a scent of lime.
It's let's see.
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.
Keep going.
I'm no, I'm just, I'm just freestyling.
I don't even know what you're talking about.
A couple bars of the song.
I can't remember.
How does that go?
No.
See, I had Mike Squires over.
Is it Mimi?
Not Mimi.
Fuck.
No.
We're playing a show.
We're playing a show.
Squires and I are playing a show in two weeks.
And he's like, here's the set list.
He made a set list of Long Winter's music.
Because he's the music director, right?
He's the music director.
And so I'm sitting on the couch and he's like, okay, first song we're going to do is Teaspoon.
And I said, I have no idea how to play at this.
And we listened to the track and I said, I don't know any.
It means different things in that song.
Oh, yeah, it does.
Oh, yeah.
In fact, I looked at the YouTube video for it and there was a comment from somebody like, why does he say teaspoon over and over?
What does that have to do with that?
Because he's part of a classic tradition of like here, there, everywhere.
Like you're having fun with it.
People don't realize how clever here, there and everywhere is.
Oh, it's very clever.
Here.
Making each day of the year.
There.
And then I want her.
And then in the bridge, the fucking bridge, he says, what does he say?
I want her under.
No, that's not.
He says, that's funny.
Underwear.
You're there in underwear.
You beside me.
I know I need that.
Down, down, down, down, down, down.
But to love her is to meet her.
Oh, and then I'm tripping balls fucking lose at that point I go straight back and listen again from the beginning No, so oh so what I was doing was I was sitting on the couch and I was just I was just Trying he's playing the bass line looking at me and I am just looking at the ceiling with my hand on the guitar and
You don't even know where to go?
No, I don't.
What fret?
What key it's in?
What I'm counting on is muscle memory.
And I'm just moving my hand up and down.
Start with a G. Always start with a G. It'll tell you if it's right.
There's zero G in teaspoons.
Zero G?
It's a G song.
You have a patch for that, I think.
And so I'm just moving the hand around.
I'm like, I know I made this chord there.
I found this chord, and I know I made it there.
So the next chord, I would have had to have gone from this chord.
To get to that chord.
It's got horns in it, right?
It does.
It's got beautiful horns.
Well, it's part of the problem.
Yeah, the horns are doing something.
Under there, there's a guitar somewhere, but I don't know what I was doing.
So anyway, it's very funny to be trying to figure out my own songs as though...
I know I've heard them.
I had to do that in 2005 when Bick and Ray got back together for one show.
And it was pretty funny, though, because, like, it was really, I mean, there's something really sweet about it.
I don't know if you ever did this, but, like, you know, you'd, like, write up or, in our case, like, print out, like,
The chords.
The chords for somebody.
Like, you'd go like, okay, well, here's Don't You Go Change and Gristle.
Mike writes a song called Don't You Go Change and Gristle.
And like, here's, it's in G, you're playing bass on this and blah, blah, blah.
And like, it was so wild to go back.
And it was almost like, it really was like in a movie where you'd like open a box and you see like the little ballerina jewel box where I'm like, oh, I remember what my middle finger does on Sundays in a row.
That was really clever because I wasn't actually that good at guitar, but I liked the way it made my hand feel.
And if I can make it like that, if I can do that again, now the song is here because I'm doing what made my hand feel good in 1995.
Do you ever get those feelings where you're like, oh, that's that C with the added low G. Yes.
It just makes me so, it still feels good.
i know it's so good i don't know if i survive that's that's a pretty look i'm still on fire right isn't that a pretty famous one for you it'll be a breeze isn't that a pretty famous c added low g yes yeah you taught me that chord the same way i taught you those two country riffs
The sunshine, boys.
The daylight's out of me.
Learn it.
You'll never look back.
It's the best.
I put the G over C every chance I get.
Especially on acoustic guitar.
You can just ignore the lower two strings at that point.
It's all happening
Or the high strings.
It's all happening on the E and the A and the D at that point.
Oh, we had one of the songs we were working on.
Mike said, oh, this has got to be an open tuning.
There's no way you could get those things.
Not so fast, Squires.
You don't know what my fingers do.
I know it's not an open tuning.
He was like, there's no way you could get all those notes ringing.
You're a beautiful mind.
I said, watch this.
Watch this.
You didn't see this coming, did you?
Clang, clang, clang.
He's like, oh, my God.
You're reinventing guitar right in front of my eyes.
I'm like, I know.
I did that in 2003, my friend.
Reinvented the guitar.
So the problem is online, people are clapping and saying their equivalent of, and again, that's not even a very original chant.
Because of the way that it's structured, you can make it go for, oh, so like right now I'm looking at the entry for my crush on House, which is a character called Alison Cameron.
So I could very well, if I got on Facebook, and I won't, but if I did, I could say...
Allison Cameron.
And people would join in.
How do you respond to that?
Do you say, oh, really?
In the eighth season, she was made head of emergency... I'm sorry, I'm on fandom.
Head of emergency medicine?
Really?
Well, I'm looking at Allison Cameron now.
Oh, she's so cute.
Jennifer Morrison.
I do not recognize her because I've not seen the show, but she's very Merlin.
She's so my type.
Did you ever see the J.J.
Abrams movie, Star Trek?
So this is one of 700 Star Trek movies, right?
Easy.
Don't be that guy.
Leave it.
It's the one.
It's the first one.
It's got Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto and Simon Pegg and Zoe Saldana.
But it begins with a flashback.
Leonard Nimoy.
Oh, my God.
John Cho.
For the listeners.
John's going to keep reading the internet, and all I'm going to say is... Anton Yelchin.
Oh, he was great.
He was so good in Green Room, too.
This is from 2009.
And so what happened was, at the beginning, we learned about the history where, you know, there's Captain Pike.
Well, no, actually, it starts with, you got Thor, played by, you know, got Chris Hemsworth, and he's about to die on the ship, but he's going to try and take out the... Romulans.
Romulans.
Romulans.
Romulans.
And then, sorry, same haircut.
But his wife is giving birth, and they're trying to figure out what to name him.
So they can't name him Tiberius.
They call him James.
They named him Romulan?
They named him... James T. Yeah, Romilly.
The mother.
The mother is Jennifer Morrison.
The woman who plays the mother, now you can't unsee that face.
And remember, then he dies in the ship with the spikes.
No, it's easy for me to unsee that face.
Oh, God, I love that beginning.
It makes me cry.
I watched that movie at the time, and I was like, oh, yeah, that guy does look like Spock.
That was pretty much my takeaway from that one.
They keep throwing him in the edge.
They bully him into the education hole.
But then they meet Spock, right?
Later, they meet real Spock.
I don't know.
I don't watch the third act of a lot of IP movies.
Oh my God, you're so right.
It's just, you're fine.
Just watch, there's so many movies where like just, especially comedies where it's like, oh my God, the first act of this is so good.
And honestly, I'll give you an example from last week, our probably fourth or fifth rewatch of the 1967 movie, The Producers, which I know our friend Sean Nelson enjoys as much as I do.
Ooh, I fell on my keys.
One of the great first acts of a movie.
Mm-hmm.
But you know what?
And then you're one and done.
And I'm not, you know me, John.
I'm not even, I'm not particularly prickly about how things change in the world.
But by the time you get into the second act and the third act, it's a little bit, the payoff's not there.
Whereas when he's talking to the old lady, did you bring the checky?
Like, that's funny.
Yeah, we are wearing a cardboard belt.
I insisted.
Did I say, did I tell you this the last time we talked?
I insisted that my kid watch National Lampoon's Vacation because I was like, this is a classic of cinema.
I would love to hear about that because I think I've mentioned this before.
It's like there's a whole bunch of movies that I keep thinking my kid needs to see.
And it started off a long time ago as stuff like Caddyshack or whatever.
And now I've gotten even more subtle where I'm like, oh, God, Caddyshack.
It's just it's a tough sell today in a lot of ways.
And you did kind of have to be there.
I feel like National Lampoon's Vacation as a movie that was on HBO every 45 minutes.
Yeah.
When I had an age when I had briefly had HBO or Showtime or whatever.
Remember when we used to come up with that little guide, that little square color booklet you'd flick through and you could see when things were going to be on?
It was so cool.
I know.
We briefly had good cable a couple times in the early 80s.
But that movie, how do you say like, oh, you know, that's the girl, you know, that girl.
Well, first of all, I'll give you two factoids.
You know, the girl.
Yeah, she's in 30 Rock, which we're watching now.
She's in 30 Rock.
My friend Michael took her on a date.
No kidding.
Oh, that's exciting.
They went to an amusement, went to like a fair, a fun fair, a carnival in New Jersey.
She had the side ponytail.
Daddy says I'm the best.
She had the side pony.
Good side pony.
Well, the problem with it is – You did good on that.
That's Jenna Maroney.
I had to explain to my daughter, listen, this is a movie of a school of movies where what the whole plot is is dad has a plan and it's going to go wrong at every stage.
And so although it's not strictly –
funny what's funny is dad's got a plan and it keeps going wrong so everything he wants to happen is gonna not and how do you explain the career trajectory of chevy chase and go this is a chevy chase like fletch well fletch i know he's on cocaine delivery vehicle yeah exactly so all we're here to do is watch this guy mug
for the camera through various situations.
Can I help you with that?
Can I help you with that, please?
But from her standpoint, none of it's funny, right?
He's not funny.
Real tomato ketchup, Eddie.
Nothing but the best Clark.
There's nothing good about it, right?
No, it's terrible.
It's all terrible.
And then you got the girl and you get the music.
Yeah, she just had a completely blank face through the whole thing.
Sorry, folks, the park's closed.
Moose out front should have told you.
And I was doing that, right, the quotes along the way.
Oh, my God.
I had that movie virtually memorized at a certain point, for sure.
I mean, and I've said to her her whole life when she's like, I'm like, sorry, folks, the park's closed.
Moose out front should have told you.
And she's never understood what I'm talking about.
It's just one more dad non sequitur.
But then it goes by in the movie, and I look over like she's going to recognize this because she's heard it her whole life.
Oh, absolutely.
Finally.
Nothing.
Yes.
Total dead.
She just, and I think maybe it's because she thinks it's another phrase in the world and he's just using it too.
Like it's just a normal thing.
That is such a good, I mean, again, like there's so many, like I'm sitting here fucking quoting Chevy Chase in the year of our lore, 2024.
I know.
I'm doing very, like, unselfconscious, because, like, there's a lot of lines in my head.
I'm just going to, can I just peel a few off off the dome?
Oh, sure.
Let's hear some Chevy Chase.
Dr. Rosen, Dr. Rosen, penis.
Is that the whole hand doc?
Moon, river.
Or, like, yeah, like, can I help you with that, Audrey?
Can I help you with that, please?
Or you get, be the ball, Danny.
Be the ball, Danny.
See the ball.
It's really hard to be the ball while you're talking.
Yeah.
It looks good on you.
See the ball.
Be the ball.
You live over there on Briar?
Yeah.
What address is that, too?
You got a pool?
A pool?
A pond?
There's going to be somebody out there who says, I listened to Roderick on the line all the way through season 11.
They just called Caddyshack.
He's a Cinderella boy.
Tears in his eyes, I guess.
That was the moment.
That was the moment I couldn't listen to the show anymore.
Cinderella story.
It was so problematic.
They were talking about Chevy Chase.
Oh, we just do that to the gophers.
We don't even need a reason.
Okay.
Okay.
Written by Doug Kenny.
Yeah.
Before the dark end.
Oh, my God.
Did you watch Feudal and Stupid Jester on Netflix?
Yes.
I have the book.
It's a coffee table book.
Will Forte is great.
The guy who plays Bill Weasley is unrecognizable.
Honestly, John, a more recent example of that, it goes all the way up to Fight Club.
Where Fight Club is a movie I've had quite an odd journey relationship with.
And to be dead honest, for years, I was the other kind of guy who went, oh, my God, the guys who like Fight Club are such idiots.
Syracuse and I talked about it on an episode.
And Syracuse is like, well, you get that they're making fun of guys like that.
And I'm like, I guess I do get that.
But I didn't.
Now I really get that.
I watched it again.
It's still, I love David.
I watched Panic Room again last night.
I love David Fincher so fucking much.
But then I, honestly, I watched it again and there's so much going for it.
And so I was finally like, you know what?
I don't think we really need to do Fight Club.
I don't think it's, let me put it this way.
It's not as unmissable as it felt at a certain point.
It's not Star Wars.
Well, there are too many Edgelords now and there's no, you can't separate Edgelords from Edgelords.
Let's go Fight Club.
Dun, dun, dun, dun.
Happy New Year, John.
Happy New Year to you, Merle.
Okay, I got to go pee.
Bye.
Talk to you later.