Ep. 525: "The Penury of the Scots"
Hello?
Hello?
Hello.
Oh, hello.
How are you?
Hello.
I might have a mix issue.
Uh-oh.
Am I hot?
Yes.
Am I too hot?
I also have that thing where my uvula is a little swollen again.
Your who?
My uvula.
Your uvula is swollen.
Also, I'm not in character yet.
I was ready.
You know, I didn't make any scratchy muffly noises at the top.
I had my mic in my hand already.
You know what?
You're going to get
You're going to get that opportunity.
Oh.
You're going to get that opportunity because I think we're going to keep this in, and then we're going to really start the show.
I'm going to get into character.
I haven't had anything to drink yet.
I didn't have time for an iced tea.
All I've got is a seltzer.
Do you want to stretch your uvula?
Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm.
Okay, all right.
I think I need to apply probably like a cold... Oh, my God, it's time to become a little Semitic.
Ahmed.
Ready?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, no, we're going to keep all this in, don't worry.
Oh, sure, sure, sure.
What's in the show is in the show, but you do want to, like, come in swinging.
Oh, yeah, but I do appreciate the fact that you...
understand, acknowledge, and celebrate the fact that there is a show and that whatever's in it is in it.
You're doing anything there, right?
There's going to be a brief, what you musicians call is Sashura.
Oh, they do?
No, no, no, it's okay.
I'll add the silence.
I have that technology.
Okay.
All right.
So you're going to add some assurance.
I'll add it.
Listen, if you want to ensure that something happens, that's with an E. I'm not saying this to you.
I know you know this.
If you want to talk about something where you engage an actuarial firm to do some kind of payment in the event that something happens or doesn't happen in the world, that's called betting or insurance with an I.
Insurance.
What about... They prefer you call it gaming, actually.
We have insurance, insurance, but what about insurance?
That's when it precedes something that you insure that begins with a vowel.
Right.
English is so tricky.
It really is.
Also, I don't know what Allegiant is, but that's the place where they played football last night.
Oh.
Well, I thought that insure was something that made you...
Regular no, no, I don't think so.
I think insure is basically creamy creamy pedialyte for retirees creamy pedialyte for retirees and Is that a pedialyte is something you get babies?
Pia has pedia right in it.
This is gonna involve feeding a child.
Is that gonna be okay?
Okay, yeah.
Listen, listen, I'm fine.
If memory serves, your recent stance on this is something along the lines of bring it.
Yeah, what can they do?
What can they do to me now?
What are you going to do to take away my career?
Children have to be fed.
I continue to feed a child three times a day.
It's your child.
Well, no, it's a whole bunch of urchins that I bring in from the street, but also my child.
Actually, now I have made such a good relationship with Child Protective Services when they came to interview me that they said, you know what?
We're going to start bringing you children.
You seem like a great dad.
What a wonderful story.
We'll start the show in a second.
It's going to be the full show.
It's going to have the opening and everything.
It'll be in a second.
I'm not in character yet.
It was really nice because they were like... It's a nice story though, John, because it really says, you know, we owe you an apology, John.
We took some random internet weirdo calling us and we turned it into a... 12 plus random internet weirdos.
Let's be clear.
I think it's probably one internet... I'm not good at order of operations.
I think it's one internet weirdo times 11 in paren plus their mom.
Have you called yet, Mom?
The thing is, the kids that they bring me are only kids whose parents have been canceled on Twitter.
And so it's been dropping off, right?
At first it was a lot.
Now this has to be the show, and I fucked it up because I'm not in character yet.
No, no, no.
John, did you serve snacks at all?
Did you offer when they – you knew they were – I mean, there wasn't something where they banged on the door, like the SS or something.
No, no, no.
And the thing is, you know, they're very professional.
So it was like snacks, and they're like, listen –
We don't want to be swayed in our ultimate determination by, you know, by any kind of what might be interpreted as a bribe.
Maybe you should have just come into my home like this.
Well, no, but they're just doing their jobs, you know.
They're just doing, are you saying they're like cops if cops were good?
Like they would have come in and actually like capture the facts and make a determination?
You know, social service is actually a whole career field.
They work so hard.
They're nothing at all like cops.
No, I know what I'm trying to do is I'm looking for opportunities here.
Yeah, well, opportunity stakes.
I've made a lot of those.
Yeah.
And now I face the final curtain.
You know, the thing is, cans, you know, he hates these cans.
He hates these cans.
He does.
But also, cans are how we're going to make it through the Pocky Lips.
yeah right so it's just gonna be laughing i couldn't i couldn't get rid of the kid doesn't know how to open a can oh how ironic i guess your kid's canceled every single day somebody pulls a can out of a cupboard somewhere and then wags it at me like and i'm like there it is what happens when the pocky comes
my daughter loves it she's you know what she is she's john no no who's the little kid with the floppy hair she's edward furlong she's like she's the one now who's going to be you know however it's time travel and i don't want to talk about that sure sure sure but right and that's going to happen is or or she's i'm trying to think of a movie that i enjoy where the child becomes important i think there's several like that
Yeah, maybe.
Oh, Damien.
What about The Exorcist?
Yeah, so she's going to be your omen too.
Yeah.
Or omen also.
I'm sitting in a chair just idly reading a book, and then all of a sudden she comes in and puts a can of beans on my head and laughs.
And I'm like, I'm glad the internet gave you so much to enjoy.
Yeah, in addition to the ability to have clothes and a place to live.
Although the internet took a lot from her too, let's be honest.
I went on Twitter the other day.
There's nothing there.
There's nothing there.
The tumbleweeds have left.
It's all ads.
You can't distinguish ads, even in comment sections.
And the thing is, it feels like... Remember those in the internet when there were like...
Bum fights?
Do you remember bum fights?
I do remember bum fights.
I've never seen bum fight, but I know about bum fights.
And this is a thing where people would use their home video.
I'm not in character yet.
They would use their home video recording equipment.
And the idea was that nominally they just paid two unhoused males assigned unhoused at birth men to have some kind of a fight with an offer that one of you will receive a cash prize if you're the bum who wins the fight, correct?
Yeah, like 20 bucks or whatever.
20 bucks, yeah.
Yeah, it was, you know, it's gross.
And there's so much of that on Twitter now.
I probably gave it to him.
It was like a roll of quarters just to be a dick.
Yeah, exactly.
Like, yeah, nine rolls of quarters.
Like, here you go, buddy.
You can do your laundry with this, yeah.
Or nine rolls of nipples.
But, yeah, it was, you know, there was all that gross stuff.
And now it seems like Twitter, you know, Twitter used to be, if somebody was going to show a video of some kind of car crash, it was always like, ha, ha, ha, something funny happens.
Nobody's hurt.
Like those cars that get stuck under that one overpass.
On the overpass.
That's right.
The trucks that bang in.
And I was scrolling down Twitter and it was like, wait a minute, that was a fatal accident.
That was a fatal... You just showed a car crash that was a fatal accident.
This is why my time on Russian Dashboard Cam Twitter, or Russian Dashboard Cam YouTube, rather, existed for only three and maybe one-eighth videos.
It went very quickly from, like, Yakety Sax-type ha-ha things into, like, here's 16 deadly motorcycle fails.
There are two great Russian Dashcam videos.
You can see the blackboarding from where the hell it would have been.
One of it was when that comet came and every vehicle in Russia has a dash cam.
And there was that massive comet that lit up the sky.
And there were 40 different videos of people just minding their own business, driving down the street.
And then all of a sudden, it's like end of the world.
People overlook the good parts of a Panopticon.
There's the other one.
Full coverage.
Where somebody in a really fast motorcycle...
There's a car that slams on its brakes, and the motorcycle hits the back of the car, and the motorcycle rider does a full front flip over the top of the car, and somehow, as the car is slowing down, and the motorcycle hits it and is slowing down, the rider...
front flips slides off the hood the car comes to a stop and the motorcyclist is on standing on his feet just like and it all i thought it was going to be that he got he hit the back and then did some kind of improbable knight rider defiance of physics and was able to like actually be run over by the car but he landed on the car like iron man he he he hit it in a way that it would have killed him
Except that the car was still in motion enough to absorb his impact energy.
Thank you, Isaac Newton.
Slow down, but everything's still slowing down, and he just walks off the front of it, and he just turns around like, I'm fine.
It was a massive wreck, but somehow I'm fine.
really amazing but then you're right oh it's all fatal crashes after that i hurt my back for a week taking out the recycling a couple weeks ago those are small muscles you know when you've got to like maneuver like through a door i know i know bending down and picking up a piece of paper is hazardous past a certain age
Well, yeah, I think you've got to know.
You've got to know.
You've got to know, and you have to understand, you have to accept and operationalize the fact that your body's not, you're not Spider-Man.
You're not Wolverine.
You don't heal.
You don't have a healing factor.
You don't have a potion.
There's no cleric in evidence.
You can't escape from a zoo, even if you're locked in it anymore.
You have to spend the night there.
We were watching sports last night, and one of the guys playing sports, I'm not saying this to make fun of the guy, because Matt and I were both like, oh, God.
This sucks.
A guy who's like a pretty good player for one of the sports teams.
And he's just, you know, jogging out onto the field after, I think, like a kick.
You know, defense goes out, offense, whatever.
And he comes in.
And he tripped and fell down.
Like in that little doop-doop-doop kind of amble out.
Yeah.
Yeah, and he pulled his Achilles.
Like an oopsie-daisy.
Oopsie-daisy in the Super Bowl.
He hurt his Achilles and he was out of the game.
That was the end for him.
Oh.
But somebody else in Russia can land on a motorcycle.
Did he still get a ring or was he on the other team?
You get a whole snow cone even if you play half a game.
Yeah, sure.
I had an interesting morning.
Do we start the show?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
I'm ready.
How's your uvula?
Hectic.
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
Hey, how's it going, man?
Oh, super dupes.
Oh, man.
Yeah.
How are you?
Fantastic.
Just, you know.
Yeah.
No, no, I do.
No, I'm doing, I'm really, really, it's so, it's very Monday.
I'm good.
I'm good.
You want to know, you want to know how, you want to know something that happened to me this morning?
Yes, please.
So, you know, I have my furnace set to go down to 60 in the night.
Because, you know, 60 is not exactly a freezing cold house, but it's, you know, saves energy while you're sleeping.
Just so just in terms of the user experience, the people who are at your home, including you, what they're experiencing is that it will not make it.
Another way to put this is it can't make the house warmer than 60, regardless of what's happening outside.
Yes.
What happens?
You set the service.
That's kind of camping weather for people who are trying to sleep.
Well, but it's nice because you cuddle up in your blankies and then it's a little cool in the room.
I think your body likes it.
I love it.
I'm just saying there are other people in this world who are like, no way.
Is this going to be under like 68?
Yeah, right.
And the thing is, there are people I know.
I know a gal who has her thermostat set to 50.
And because she's a little bit Scottish and she doesn't want to.
I've read about them.
Yeah.
She doesn't want to heat up the world.
And I'm like, come on.
I've read about the penury of the Scots.
Yeah.
We live in a society.
We do.
Like turn up your freaking thing a little bit.
But so it goes down to 60.
And then in the day I pump it up to 68 or if I'm feeling a chill, I go to 70.
And, but, so I have programmed, I do not have one of your fancy Matt Howey thermostats.
Right, right.
I have an old-fashioned one.
You get a Honeywell's.
Yeah, probably something like that.
Oh, yeah.
Are you kidding me?
We couldn't have any of those.
We're on the wiring for it.
Yeah, exactly.
So the problem is that I live an unscheduled life.
Sometimes I'm up really late.
Sometimes I wake up in the morning, I leave the house immediately.
Sometimes I'm here all day.
And so I have programmed the thermostat at various times during the day to go off and go back to 60.
I used to do this in the 90s.
In the 90s, I got one of those thermostats where you could have, it had like basically four things.
It was an on, off, and an on, off.
Right?
So you could say like, and that was it.
But you could say at 9 a.m.
when everybody's gone to work, bring it down lower.
And then when we, like a three or four, when people are going to start coming home after a while, you warm it up.
Right.
That you warm it up, Chris.
Yeah, that's the premise.
Right.
And so so what happens is I'll be sitting here in the house sometimes and all of a sudden I'm like cold and I go, oh, right.
I left the furnace off.
And so I go over and I punch it up.
But then other times I'll be gone during the day and I'm confident that at some point the furnace turned off because I forgot.
Like, for example, if your mom had to let herself in to like do something, she's there during the frigid times.
But she would never turn the furnace on for any reason.
My mom just leaves her hat on because she's a little bit Scottish.
Mm-hmm.
But the problem is I also have the furnace set to go off multiple other times in the day.
And one of those times is three o'clock in the morning because I know that normally by three I should be in bed.
And if I have been up and I've left the furnace on, I know three o'clock is a hard out.
But last night I was up a little bit later.
I bumped up the furnace and somehow I missed the three o'clock shut off.
This happens, you know, not all the time, but every once in a while.
So I woke up this morning and I could feel in the bathroom.
oh, I left the furnace on.
It's 70 degrees in here.
Oh, you walked past the blower?
Yeah, it didn't need to be 70 degrees all night.
I'm just using energy.
I had this morning.
It was crazy.
It was really like I was walking through some kind of like a chemical containment thing.
I walked by and you could feel that there's that blast.
Oh, man, that's just shooting money at me.
It's just shooting money, exactly.
So I come out and I'm like, you know, it's okay.
The house is warm.
It couldn't have been that bad.
It's how much extra?
energy are you using you know enough but yeah because i'm a little bit scottish yeah i walk out and somehow the front door has been open all night huh i went out took the trash out in the
Not to give any listeners any ideas if they're like professional burglars who love our show.
But you know what?
I am as God made me.
It's like a scorpion on the back of a frog or whatever.
Don't be that.
Don't be that burglar.
I think what you're saying is you can't change a frog.
There you go.
Sorry.
What is the other one?
You can't change a scorpion.
Can't change a scorpion.
It's in his nature.
Yeah.
If you're a burglar, just direct your burglaring attention to other people.
They say the best way to not get robbed is to make you feel less appealing than other places.
So just locking your door, as my friend Chris's dad used to say, keeps the honest people honest.
They're going to go find some sap who didn't lock their door.
They're going to find a sap.
And the only reason a burglar would come in here is if they really needed some Civil War medals.
Oh.
And I doubt most of you do so it's pretty specific but so the front door of my house Architect Ben King who has been here and looked around kind of has given me the suggestion that the front door of my house has been repurposed from an old elementary school and
Because it's glass and there are two doors.
And if you want, you can open them both.
Wait, like a door to the school?
Yeah, it's a double door from a school that somebody put in.
Like the kind where two handles you would open like a person back in the day.
Yeah, except it has darkness.
Like a library.
Like two doors, you open them, and then they open up.
And you walk in, they're glass that's got handles.
Open out, and then when you leave, you push to leave.
And it's frosted glass.
No, but it's been flipped around, so it opens in like a normal door.
That's clever.
But anyway, it's not your typical door for a house.
Yeah.
And it doesn't always, you shut it and it will kind of click, but it didn't really click.
And sometimes it's got a little bit of bounce where the catch doesn't make it.
Like if you're like kind of doing it with your elbow.
It depends.
It depends.
I don't know what your door is like.
All doors are different.
They are.
And you know what?
I'm thankful.
Do you think it makes you more mindful about doors?
Making sure you close it.
Every door is sacred.
It does.
God gets quite irate.
I'm much more mindful.
But in this case, and the thing is, I don't know whether that door opened 20 minutes before I woke up.
You felt the most plausible way to understand or explain the door if it was you who did it.
That doesn't mean it is decisive.
But if you say, if I were the one who was responsible for that, which you probably were, this is probably how it happened.
Yes.
And I also have a kind of a litmus for has my house been burgled?
Did the possum distract me?
Are all my silver doorstops gone?
And the way that I do that is I leave a guitar in the living room.
So when I wake up and the door is open, not that this has happened many times, but if I immediately go into karate chop mode and I'm like, okay, there's burglars in the house who have taken all of my passports.
Now I've got to go room to room
you know, in like a high alert.
But when I walk in and there's a, and there's a telecaster sitting there, I know there's no burglar in the world that could pass it up.
It's like a bait.
And so if the Telecaster is still sitting there, I know, what burglar is in here and went down to the laundry room?
Like, I'm safe.
There's no danger here.
I'd always heard, and I'd done this a couple times, I don't want to admit it, but, like, I heard, if you want, in a similar way, if you want to, like, so you do what you can by, like, quote, locking your door, right?
And, like, you know, a determined person will get in.
But, like, if you've got, like, what you're imagining is, like, a nut who's just trying to come in and get money for drugs, like they tell you on TV.
Like, well, okay, so, but, like, even a Telecaster would be a lot to have defense.
I've heard put out, like, a $20 bill or several $20 bills and put them right there.
And that a lot of, at least in the idea, like a TV set idea of how a ding-a-ling works is to go, oh, money, they grab that and then they leave.
Yeah.
Which is less money than almost anything they stole would be, but you've given them the most fungible currency there is, which is the American dollar.
I thought you were going to say a bunch of rolls of nickels.
No, no, that's for bomb fights.
Is that part of this show?
It's all part of the show.
I don't think so.
Anyway, so then I had to confront the fact.
James Bond puts a hair over it.
James Bond in Dr. No, if memory serves, when he checks into the hotel, he does several things.
He's looking for bugs, but he also takes a hair.
He plucks a hair off his head, off his toupee, technically.
And then he kind of puts it.
You ever do anything like that?
You ever put a piece of paper in the door to see if it fell while you were gone?
You know, it was always broken matchstick.
I thought you closed the matchstick and then you break it so you can't see it because other spies are going to know that tradecraft.
Yes.
But no, I have not ever felt at no point in my life have I felt that someone was going to come into my house when I was gone for the for the purpose of.
like rifling through my file cabinets.
I've never felt like the Watergate Hotel.
Oh, that you would get Daniel Ellsberg by somebody?
Yeah.
No, nobody's ever gonna... I've got no... I'm an open book, Merlin.
I've got no secrets.
So it's just burglars.
And you're right.
I should just take a piece of fishing line and attach a $20 bill to it right inside the door.
So when you walk in, it's just right there.
And you're like, drugs!
Ghost money!
I'm out!
I'm out.
Because when I finally got all my stuff back.
It was like trick-or-treat or Passover.
You just have a little bowl there with, I don't know if 20s is too much.
A little mezuzah on the front.
A mezuzah.
Don't steal my babies.
Is that the stick they read the book with?
No.
the mezuzah yeah no the mezuzah is the little thing that oh that's the little sideways door yeah the larry david thing yeah yeah yeah so so so it's like no no no if you put out a bowl of fives like it was halloween or passover well the thing is a bowl of fives would be great anyway because on your way out of the house you need to grab a five you'd always grab a five oh you know five is a very good bill it's great for a tip it's great for buying one item at a at a at a walgreens
You're never in that situation where you're like, oh, shit, I don't have any money.
I forgot my wallet yesterday and I needed to buy some things at Walgreens.
And I thought, here's the thing.
I'm pretty sure, you know, just sometimes Apple Pay just whatever for whatever reason doesn't work.
I thought I've got my phone.
I'll be fine.
But you know what I did here at my little officina?
I grabbed a five.
I've grabbed three fives and a stack of ones.
And I thought my plan is I can get all the stuff that I want to get if I can use my Apple Pay.
But if I can't, I got a backup plan.
Can I just say the basis of my backup plan?
$5 bills.
love it love it love it love it love it okay sorry go ahead no no no i was that also lets the air in it lets it lets the uh the burglars in it lets the spooks in who knows how much money i spent last night heating up the front yard to 70 degrees i'm not paying to cool the out of doors and i'm like i just i walked around the house just like that refrigerator door like what's happening to me
I feel like Dick Van Dyke in the latest Mary Poppins movie where he's playing his old self as an old man.
Oh, wait.
I thought Manuel Miranda was the Dick.
Wait, so the real Dick Van Dyke is in the movie?
The real Dick Van Dyke is in the new movie.
With the pretty woman.
With the pretty lady.
With the pretty lady that's married to the ding dong.
Yeah, to the director guy.
Director guy, sure.
Emily Blunt is married to Jim Jarmusch.
Yes, Sign Poppins at birth, and she's married to a guy from The Office.
Yeah.
You know, when you rewatch The Office, you feel a lot of sympathy for Dwight in a lot of ways.
Jim's kind of an asshole.
So I've met, of course, I did a couple of things with Dwight here in Seattle.
He's a Seattleite.
He's a member of the Baha'i faith.
And I was his interlocutor when his book came out.
We did a big presentation where I interviewed him on stage.
Oh, true.
He also does funny stuff.
He does funny stuff on Tim and Eric, too.
Like, he'll do a funny thing.
He's funny.
Yeah, he's funny.
The interviews with Billy Eilish, that's fun.
He wanted to talk about Baha'i.
And so a lot of people after the event were, like, mad on the internet because they wanted to see the funny man be funny, and he wanted to talk about his faith.
Yeah.
If I could just give a slight reframe on that, a bunch of people showed up to get what they thought was good.
And he was there to say, like, you know, this is an opportunity for me to talk about what I think is good.
Yeah, this is my book reading.
There's worse things in this world than Baha'i people.
John Krasinski, when Ben Gibbard married Zooey Deschanel, he moved to Los Angeles and he said, I'm leaving Seattle and I'm going to go down to Hollywood and I'm going to be a star who's living a star life with other stars and this is my new life.
He's, you know, Gibbard is a hometown boy.
He's a Northwesterner all the way.
But he said at that point in his life, I'm going to go to Hollywood.
She can't be living in Seattle.
No, no, no, no, no.
And so he went down there.
Was she doing New Girl at the time?
Probably.
No, it was before that.
Post-Elf, though.
Post-elf.
So she's a star, but she's not a huge star yet.
You know, she's like, she's an indie darling.
She's a manic pixie dream girl.
Same with M. Ward?
Same with M. Ward.
Oh, yeah.
Ukulele's up and down.
But so, but she's a legacy star, right?
So he's all of a sudden in all these parties with all these, you know, and just like their friends, their friend group are famous.
The seeds of trouble were there from the beginning, you know?
But so he, at some point, decides, or doesn't decide, however...
John Krasinski becomes his Hollywood best buddy.
And so he and Krasinski are like pals.
Now they're palling around Hollywood.
They're like high-fiving white guys.
It's like part of his new life.
And so then he and Zoe aren't married yet.
They're boyfriend and girlfriend.
And then he has the wedding.
But they get married in Seattle at a farm somewhere.
And it was the craziest thing because all the guests of the wedding had to meet at this hotel and
not say anything to anybody.
We all had, we are all wearing white carnations or something.
And then one by one, we went outside and like limos or whatever would pull up and we'd get in the limos going to a secret location.
And we was all like, wow, this is real cool.
Like cloak and dagger.
Cause you know, if it was Zooey Deschanel's wedding and their helicopters, it'd be bad.
So this was how they were dealing with this in Seattle.
Now in Seattle, there's not, you know, helicopters can't even fly cause it's the, it's too foggy.
But so we all go out to the thing.
They love that stuff in L.A.
Yeah, that's right.
This was a very L.A.
event.
You're going to have to adapt.
This is why Hitler, one of the numerous reasons Hitler should never have attempted to open a front by invading Russia, you know, the way he did.
Ditto here.
Don't bring your German techniques to Stalingrad, buddy.
Well, because, you know, don't bring your helicopters to Seattle because they're useless here.
They had the wedding at like a swampy strawberry farm.
You know, I'm sure that when the Hollywood people got out there, they were like, what?
This is the wedding?
Like, A, it's raining.
And B, what is this?
There's strawberries all over.
Can I wear a floppy hat for this?
The wedding was performed by Lemony Snicket.
And what was crazy was... That's a very... No disrespect to Ms.
D. That's a very... It really was.
Everything was.
And Ben... In his... You know, trying to like make it in the... Not make it in... He's not... He has no aspirations to be a star.
He's got a new life.
He's got to like adapt.
Yeah.
He's trying to accommodate his wife.
And so John Krasinski is in his wedding party.
He's one of his men, you know, you've got five men or whatever, and he's got Nick from his band and he's got, you know, he's got, uh, he, he tried to do like Seattle and, and LA mixed together.
And so
Naturally, my place, my natural place in that wedding party was taken by John Krasinski.
There wasn't that if you're going to put three L.A.
guys in there, you got to eliminate three Seattle guys.
And you're trying to build a team.
You need, you know, this is what makes New College interesting.
It's what makes the X-Men interesting.
You don't want everybody to be the same.
That's not the point.
You want to mix.
And in a good wedding party, there's going to be a mix.
But especially if you're making a gesture to show that you're adapting to this new world, you're going to have to push out a John Roderick for, you're going to have to substitute your Johns.
That's right.
You need a John Krasinski instead of a John Roderick.
And I understood completely.
And I was like, John Krasinski is a very cute guy.
Well, they should let you do the wedding then.
Well, no, Lemony Snicker was doing the wedding.
I understand.
So, so we're there at the wedding and, uh, and there are so many famouses, including the girl from, uh, what's the one where she's a, she lives in California, but she discovers she's a princess.
um princess diaries uh and that uh actress is called the one though ann hathaway yeah ann hathaway's there and i'm thinking like oh i'm gonna dance with ann hathaway but this was a period of my life where i looked really weird i was missing a tooth and had long hair and i'm just wearing a bow tie is that what you look like when you met uh the lady from community or did you look different then
Oh, no.
Then I had recently cut my hair too short, and I looked like, I don't know.
But you looked like a man who could talk about architecture in L.A.?
Yeah, but I also kind of looked like a club bouncer in Switzerland.
I don't know.
It was a bad look.
Anyway, sorry.
That was in my period where I was like, oh, I cut my hair.
It looks pretty good, except I'm going to do it again a little bit.
If memory serves, one of your challenges is you keep iterating the hair.
3 a.m.
or so, you'll wake up and go, maybe I need a little more of a term.
That's right.
No Hathaway for you.
At the wedding, during the whole afternoon, it's raining a little bit, but Krasinski's on the phone.
He's walking around.
I mean, I'm sorry.
He's a groomsman, like on the phone.
He's on the phone.
He was good.
He stood up and did a good job.
I hope he was calling in an airstrike.
Well, no, I think he was doing some L.A.
business or he was talking to somebody.
I get the feeling he's an L.A.
business guy.
I have a John Krasinski anecdote, too, that makes me think he's very much an L.A.
business guy.
Well, and that's the, yeah, that was the thing.
So he did not, so it was very clear that he was always kind of standing outside the reception with a finger in one ear.
What better way to bring LA to Seattle than to have the substitute groomsmen on the phone?
Talking points in back end and whatnot.
What's crazy is that there's nothing, you know, at the time, I don't know, who knows about Seattle now, but at the time, there was nothing less Seattle than walking around a swampy strawberry farm with your finger in your ear doing LA business during somebody's wedding.
And it was, and so later...
Ben, when he tells the story of his two-year L.A.
sojourn, he says, I should have known.
I should have known when Krasinski was on the phone during my wedding that this would never last.
To tell you something.
It was Barzini all along.
Krasinski.
Out of loyalty, whenever I hear his name, I spit on the floor.
You spit on the floor.
He spits on his own floor.
Not an actual spit.
No, I understand.
It's like a little Greek gesture.
No, I understand.
It's support.
It's Seattle Strong.
Yeah.
If he showed up here, I'd be nice as could be.
I'd offer him a coffee.
I'd say, come sit down.
Would you like a Telecaster?
Have a five out of the bowl of fives.
But I would not.
But I would the whole time be like, what are you going to do?
You got a phone call?
Yeah, you should put one of those phones you can get at a hardware store that's got like a phone from the 90s and a buster over it.
Just no cell phones.
A buster?
You know, a buster.
A buster.
Like a no fat chicks symbol?
You know, like a ghost buster.
Like a buster.
Okay, I got it.
I got it.
Don't be basic with me, John.
You know what I'm talking about.
A big red buster.
It became popular in the 70s.
And then Eddie Van Halen had one on his guitar cases that said no fat chicks.
Yeah.
I remember that, but I did not know.
Ghostbuster, I think, is when I started in any way calling it a buster.
Wow, because there's that line.
It's like in a Janet Jackson or a TLC song.
It's TLC.
We don't want no busters.
Oh, I see, I see.
A buster's a guy who checks his phone at a Seattle wedding.
That's right.
And then, of course, I've got that other problem with the guy from that show.
So I got the one guy from that show that I like, and then I got the John Krasinski story where I kind of spit on the floor a little bit because he's on the phone all the time.
And then the other guy, what's the other guy's name?
Oh, his name's, you're talking about Dwight Schrute?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The third guy, he's not one of the main characters, but he's not one of the background characters.
Third man's Harry Lime.
You're talking about In the Office?
You're thinking of another one, like Steve Carell?
No, no, no.
Not the boss.
He's like a third wheel.
And he's some kind of Yale.
He's a director.
Oh, Ed Helms?
No.
No, no, no.
He was a performer on Talon on the show?
He was in the Tarantino movie about Nazis called Inglourious Bastards.
I love that movie.
And it was him, the one that's on The Office that's also in Inglourious Pass.
Oh, I know who you mean.
You're talking about B.J.
Novak.
B.J.
Novak.
Sound good.
Have I?
I've told you this.
That was my Brad Pitt as the guy from Tennessee impression.
We'll hear it again.
Sound good.
So when I first met Millennium Girlfriend at the Elon Musk party.
That's the one I left.
Where you were there.
I was drunk and I left.
And then you were like, I'm drunk.
And you punched out some back door that I didn't even know was a door.
You were right there.
I was talking to you.
And then I turned around.
There was not even a whoosh sound.
How did he even get out of here?
This is a closed system.
That's what I said by.
Is he in the attic?
No.
All right.
So, so you missed meeting millennium girlfriend cause that happened at the end of the night.
I had dinner with her when she had great eyebrows.
So she and I were talking for the very first time.
And what's crazy is when I think back at it, she had ironed her hair.
So her hair was black and absolutely like bored straight and
And then, but her actual hair.
It actually has a little bit of curl to it naturally, right?
It's like Gina Lola Brigida.
Her hair is all this crazy, like Basque mess of hair.
And I never saw her again.
Put your hand in.
You can't get it out, you know?
But so I'm talking to her and I'm like, so anyway, what's your story?
You know, just making conversation.
This is before we fell in love.
And she said, oh, well, you know, I'm just the lawyer for medium and just at this party because it's
whatever uh ev williams something oh that's i forgot about that so ev sorry ev would be there ev was there and of oh and so she got she was high enough up there that she kind of got invited along she was the chief counsel of medium she was ev's right hand uh girl friday the one that was doing all the the law the lawyering yeah yeah and so so i was like well i'm impressed you know that's impressive and
And, uh, but you know, I was not, I'm never the type to like, uh, like suggest even to somebody like, oh, let's have a romantic assignment.
Did you say anything like, hmm, you ever watched the OC?
Nope, never did.
That's right.
Have you ever, did you, did you by any chance buy the Christmas compilation of OC tracks?
huh because uh christmas uh with you is the best you might remember this tune yeah like uh you know there's a kind of car out there that i was almost almost in an ad for almost in an ad for one of those cars they paid me for it they didn't use my music but so at some beer ad at one point oh yeah oh no it was the beer ad that we we got paid for but didn't air because i was very conflicted like oh what's in fire island bought for something
Yeah, and it was actually used in a Fiat ad.
So if she had seen the Fiat ad.
Thanks again, Tony.
Nobody in America today has not seen something that had the long winters in it because we papered the world at the time.
But anyway, at some point, she just drops into conversation.
Oh, yeah.
Well, my boyfriend is B.J.
Novak.
Wait a minute.
Millennium Girlfriend.
I'm so sorry, John.
I swear to fucking God, this is the first time I've heard this.
The woman who used to be at your house and who stole all your underwear, your German underwear, and your Filson bags had great eyebrows.
She, at the time, had a little tete-a-tete with the actor from Inglourious Basterds in the office.
According to her... Benjamin Joseph Novak, I'm guessing.
I have no reason to doubt it because he was constantly blowing up her phone through our entire relationship.
He's sweaty.
What the fuck is going on here?
Really?
Oh, no.
You shouldn't have said that.
I was like...
No, no, no.
That's fine.
That's fine.
Are there any other names you want me to beep while we're here?
Do you want me to say Zooey Deschanel?
You know what?
It's all okay, right?
It's all in the show.
I'm an open book.
Now, that doesn't mean everybody I talk about is an open book.
Oh, that means if their name happens to be on a page, Hakuna Matata.
You know, I'm a gossip.
You're not necessarily a gossip.
Most of my friends aren't a gossip.
No, I'm the anti-gossip for sure.
But maybe that's one reason I'm not an open book.
The thing is, part of being an open book is you say, this is a book and it's open.
With me, I say, I'm not even going to tell you whether I've got a book, so we don't need to worry about you looking at my pages.
Yeah, and you remember talking to Dan, it's like he never even read a book.
Dan's just like, I don't got nothing to say about myself or anything.
So you met at the party.
But I...
So but the thing is, it takes a village.
And one of the things about a village is there's at least one person that's gossiping all the time over a fence.
And that's me.
That's one of my jobs because I live out on the edge of town.
But when I do come to town, I want to hear everybody's business.
so anyway so and i'm like bj novak huh and i'm does that mean people also bring you the gossip it means that you're the kind of person who will parcel it out in a way you think is appropriate but that also means like if i want to feed something into the system you could go straight to the fish wife i'm not trying to ruin anybody no that's not the point you're an open book john krasinski but they're just hollywood guys they don't even have real so far so far the people from the office are not coming is it rain wilson who's a bahai
Rainn Wilson is a great guy.
I had a friend named Jeff in college who was behind.
He was wonderful.
Yeah.
Oh, no, he's a wonderful guy.
But it's one of those neat religions.
It's almost like if Unitarians were a little less suburban, where it's like, no, we actually do believe in stuff, but we don't bug you about it.
But if you want to talk about it, you're going to discover it's actually really nice.
If you want to come to my book reading, you're going to hear all about it.
It's open.
And Rain loves rock and roll, too.
He's like a stand-up guy.
Yep, yep, yep.
He's funny.
Millennium girlfriend at this bar.
Hodgman's there.
Elon Musk is hanging from a meat hook or whatever.
I don't know.
There's lobsters, a whole table full of lobsters.
Free lobsters.
Take them home.
Free lobsters.
They're in the gift bag.
How many lobsters do you want?
There was some chef in a white jacket that was apparently famous, and everybody was like, yes, chef.
And if I said his name... No, no, no, please don't.
I like it better not knowing that there's somebody you might have seen be a judge on Top Chef who was also hired to dispense lobsters at Elon Musk's house.
He's like, you want a lobster?
He's all sad.
You want a lobster?
Take it.
I don't know.
I didn't pay for him.
They gave me 50 grand to stand here in a hat.
But so I'm thinking to myself, well, I'm never going to see this girl again because she's BJ Novak's Ivy League lawyer girlfriend who runs the whatever, I guess, medium.
And so I'm just trying to get back to the hotel, frankly, because I got a flight tomorrow.
I got to find out where my friend Merlin went.
And where the hell did Merlin go?
He's not answering his phone.
Hello.
This is an ad.
for my new ebay store my ebay name is morgan rides free which many of you will remember was my hobo name when i was 17 morgan rides free i made it my ebay name when i first signed up for ebay in the 2000s someone told me then that you should never put your real name on the internet and
because people are weird.
And I took that to heart at first.
And so my eBay name is Morgan Rides Free.
All one word, Morgan Rides Free.
I've been buying things on eBay ever since then.
I have 100% positivity rating, but I've never sold a darn thing.
And now I'm starting.
And if it's a success, I'll probably walk around the house and just pick up everything that isn't nailed down and sell it.
But I'm starting out with some vintage extra large menswear, as you might expect.
And I'll branch out into other things.
I don't want you to feel guilty for me or buy things out of a feeling of obligation.
But if you are someone between the sizes of 40 and 48 and like to or you're someone smaller than that but likes to wear baggy clothes and boyfriend sweaters.
then morgan rides free is the place to be thank you everyone i'll see you there and uh and at some point uh we're we're parting company and i say oh well you know it was real nice meeting you uh and so forth and so on and she goes well how are we going to stay in touch and i said i said the same thing i always say in that situation
I say, I'll find you.
Don't worry.
I'll find you.
Which is my way of saying, let's not pretend we're going to stay in touch.
Well, I'm going to decide whether that's a threat or not.
Well, you know, like, the world is big.
I know where you work.
And I'll call him and say, the girl with the iron hair who's dating BJ Novak.
But I'm not going to.
Right?
I'm not going to.
Just call the main switchboard and start asking questions.
You're a regular Columbo.
Yeah.
If you know the party's extension, press 1.
And so I say, I'll call you.
And she says, bullshit.
And she grabs my phone and she puts her phone number.
John, it's no wonder.
It's no, she's like, I just, I want to state for the record.
She's kind of, I don't want to see if I say my type, I worry that people think that I'm a horn dog.
It's no, it's just like that.
I can tell as somebody who never had a latent period and has liked girls forever, not for penis reasons, but for just like, I like girls reasons.
She's my type.
She's really, she's really,
adorable she's pretty she's beautiful but she's also ridiculously charismatic well and much much like your your your daughters as you know i've stipulated your daughter's mother partner is one of the most charming people i've ever met i i could have a crush on your mother's she's absolutely that type
If she grabbed my phone or if Millennium Girlfriend grabbed my phone and said, bullshit, I'm going to put in my number, forget it.
I'd be at the end of a line.
I had lunch with Travis Morrison from the dismemberment plan.
You remember Travis.
He stole your chili.
Well, he did later, but at one point- I'm still mad at Pitchfork.
Still mad at Pitchfork.
We were having a lunch somewhere, and he leans over the table, and he goes, you know who's the stealth, foxiest girl in Seattle?
And I was like, who?
Who?
And he said, Sean Nelson's wife, Ariella.
And I was like, oh, this.
And he was like, she's just like, no, nobody even notices because she wears.
There's ever been an episode of this show that might be played in court.
This is it.
So anyway, she grabs my phone, puts her phone number in and then calls herself.
Right in front of you.
Yeah.
And then my phone number comes up on her phone and she goes, there you go.
You know, here's your outline.
Does she enter a name?
A contact name?
No, no.
Does she have like a funny name?
Like, you know, something cute?
Not even a funny name.
Nope.
She does.
She put a real name in?
Because she's going back into the party to, I don't know what, to dance with the Cirque du Soleil.
Dance the night away.
And so Hodgman and I go outside.
We're waiting for whatever car he called, whatever suburban with ground lights on it or something.
And we're standing there.
And my phone buzzes.
And I look down and she has texted me.
It's BJ Novak.
He's standing across the driveway.
He's like, fuck you, man.
No, she sent me the wedding ring emoji.
What?
She sent me the wedding ring emoji.
What the fuck?
As a text.
What?
Oh, wait.
Okay, hang on.
I'm 50.
I thought I was 58.
I'm 57.
I'm old.
If somebody sent me what you've described as the wedding ring emoji, and I read it as the wedding ring emoji, I would think it's about weddings.
Does that mean give me a ring as in like a metaphorical ring?
Oh, that never occurred to me.
Don't be careless with people's emotions.
My goodness, what an odd thing to send to a man.
That's a very confusing... You know what that is?
That's a test, John.
How you... Oh, you know what?
You get a wedding ring?
Well, she was a little drunk.
I was a big drunk at the time.
I was like, what the fuck is this supposed to be?
And he looked at it, and he was like, I don't know.
And I said, BJ Novak's girlfriend just sent me a wedding ring emoji.
And he goes, I don't know what to do with it.
When did you put it that way?
Say I'm good.
So I went back to the hotel, and the next morning we started texting, and by the end of the next day, we were boyfriend and girlfriend.
Was she, like, had... You shouldn't say it.
We can't tell other people.
We oughtn't tell other people's stories here, but I'm curious.
So is it fair?
Can I derive, if 80% of what you said even is true, can I derive from this probably that Millennium Girlfriend was in the midst of extricating herself from a relationship when she met you?
I don't know.
Because it probably wasn't going great if it was over in less than 24 hours.
She lived in San Francisco.
He lived in Los Angeles.
But she was initiating a relationship with someone who lived in Seattle.
So it's not like that he lived in LA and she lived in San Francisco.
That's a lot closer together than Seattle.
That's totally normal.
No, it's absolutely 100% normal.
Normal thing for a lawyer to do is have a three city involved breakup slash relationship situation.
Well, and I'm sitting at the gate, at the Delta Airlines gate in SFO.
Yeah.
And I'm texting with her and she's like, well, I guess we're dating.
Yeah.
I'm not even out of San Francisco yet.
I've only seen her the once.
The last time I saw her, she had ironed hair.
And I'm like, I guess we are.
And then, you know, we went out for 18 months.
We almost bought a house together.
When's the next time you saw each other F2F?
Well, I had just bought the GM CRV.
And so I was like – I was driving around Seattle.
It's like a mental illness.
It's like a mental illness – 1,000-piece mental illness puzzle that turns out to be completely incompatible, but you still try to put it together anyway.
You just bought – and this is at a time when you were –
one doesn't say undiagnosed, but you just decided, hey, I want a GMCRV.
You got one.
And I was driving it around Seattle like it was my daily driver.
Like just driving around streets and like going to the grocery store.
Like that fancy mall we went to a couple times.
Like, right, you know, that one that's like a multi-story nice mall.
Like it would be pretty hard to, for an ordinary, let's put it this way, for an ordinary person, especially somebody who wasn't from that area, to know.
And a GMC, just to be clear, there were two models of that and you had the big one.
I had the bigger one.
It's a beautiful one.
I have photos of my kid and you in it.
I think that's when you brought me the cello.
You decided I needed a cello, so you brought me a cello.
And then we went and toured your vehicle, and it was very purple and kind of moist inside.
Sure, there was a lot of purple, and it was a little bit moist, although that's a trigger word for a lot of people.
Oh, sorry.
It smelled craveable.
And it was very moist, and it had a sort of purple nappy feeling to it, a lot of it.
A little bit, yeah.
Well, so Millennium Girlfriend says, well, now we're dating...
Can you imagine getting picked up for a date?
You've broken up with BJ Novak.
You're ready for a big night on the town.
So she says, I'm going to come to Seattle, but I'm going to bring a friend because I'm not so sure if I'm not, you know, we've, we've never even really seen each other in the day.
Yeah.
So I'm going to bring a friend as like a wingman, a little bit of an escort just to chaperone us to make sure that it's not weird.
And I go, okay, all right, sure.
So they get an Airbnb on Capitol Hill, and they fly up here, and I come to pick them up in the GMC RV.
At the airport?
No, she said, don't pick us up at the airport, pick us up at the apartment.
And so I come to the apartment, and I pull up out front, and it's my ex-girlfriend's apartment building.
And I go, that couldn't be weirder.
I didn't even know they Airbnb'd it, but it's my ex-girlfriend's apartment building.
And they say, okay, we're coming out.
We're going to meet you on the front, you know, in the front.
Well, the GMCRB takes up the whole street.
So they come out and they get in and her friend gets in a seat, a chair, and she actually sits on the floor at, and then, and with her like head on my knee, right?
While we're driving around the neighborhood.
This is the first time you've seen each other since Elon Musk's house.
She sits next to you.
You're in the captain's chair.
That's right.
You're in the cockpit.
And the lawyer that you met.
Sitting down on the transmission hump or whatever.
Hmm.
Well, then we end up, we drive around, we go to a sushi place, we come back, we go into their apartment.
I'm sorry, I found that a little distracting.
Well, it was very distracting.
But you always drive, you're a good driver.
Thank you.
And it was like, all right, well, here, our relationship is off to the races.
Yeah.
She's not afraid to set a tone.
No, she's setting a tone.
Absolutely.
We get back to their apartment.
We go into the building.
They're renting my ex-girlfriend's apartment.
Okay.
Which I painted and I'm walking around the apartment.
John, your cells were in there when they arrived.
I painted this.
I painted that.
You had DNA in that room when they arrived.
You notice the floor is blue?
I painted the floor blue.
I'm walking around the place and I'm like, well, I haven't been in here since the day I broke up with my ex-girlfriend and now here we are on our first date.
It was very, and then, oh, there's a knock on the door.
It's the landlord who's my friend, Ben Beres.
And he walks in and he's like, what are you doing here?
And I said, oh, well, my, my friends, uh, perren, new girlfriend and perren are the ones who are, uh, Airbnb in it from you.
And he's like, boy, that's a, that's a great story.
We'll tell for years.
Uh, and we still do.
We tell it all the time.
I don't know what she told BJ Novak, but he didn't stop.
He didn't stop sending her a wedding ring emojis.
So, I don't know.
I don't think they're back together.
She got married.
Millennium girlfriend married somebody else.
Oh, okay.
I missed my chance.
The window closed.
That's a lot of material for me to... This is almost all new.
I mean, honestly, almost all new or so updated that it might as well be new information to me.
And we're friends, so this is a lot for me to process.
And when you process new information as an adult...
when you're whatever I am, 57 or 58, when you do that.
Basically, the mnemonic is to remember that I'm the same age as the Super Bowl.
So if you like Roman numerals, you can always know how old I am mostly.
Oh, 57 or 8.
Yeah, and about every three years I remember that, which is not a good sign.
Because, I mean, I really should always be the same age.
Because sometimes I'll go, wait a minute, Michael Stipe's that age?
And I'm like, yeah, we've always been around this same age compared to each other.
And I remember that sometimes.
Well, see, now that helps me because Madonna and Prince were both 10 years older than I was exactly.
So every time somebody's like, whoa, Madonna, can you believe it?
I'm like, okay, that's where I'm going to be in 10 years.
If Madonna is doing that now, I can see my future.
That's a really good way to look at it, John.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
And I used to do that with Prince, but then at a certain point that didn't work anymore.
Because I didn't, because I'm already older than Prince was when he died.
I think.
How old was Prince when he died?
I bet you are.
But, you know, it's just, it's weird.
Like, you know, having a kid, you give a viewport.
You know this as a person who grows up, if you've ever known other children.
And then when your kid has friends, like a good example, you know, actually your kid and my kid.
No, wait, Merlin, you are the age that Prince was when he died.
I'm still two years younger.
Well, good for him.
Good for him.
Yeah, so he lived to be 57 or 58.
And what was it that he took a drug that— It was drugs.
Do you remember what kind of drug he took?
Some kind of sleeping pill.
Was it the Michael Jackson drug?
I really need to learn the name of that.
Oh, you know what it was?
He had tremendous pain because of all those James Brown splits—
that he did, all of his ankles and knees and everything were just totally wrecked.
Yeah, sure.
And he walked around in pain, but he couldn't stop for whatever reason.
When he played in Seattle, he played this incredibly loud rock set at this tiny club.
And I remember being, first of all, overwhelmed by sound.
Which was not, you know, when you go to see My Bloody Valentine or Massive Attack, you want to be overwhelmed by sound.
When you go to see Prince, you want to hear the song.
So I was a little bit, hmm.
But then I thought, why isn't he sitting on a stool playing an acoustic guitar?
That would be the greatest show.
If Prince did a tour where he sat on a stool with an acoustic guitar and played...
Because he's got the chops at both of those things.
Well, he's a great performer in writ large, but he's a really good singer and he's a really good guitar player.
So he could do arrangements that would, let's just say it would be a lot more interesting than when Eric Clapton did that.
I bet it would be incredible.
Sit at the piano, do some numbers.
And if he did play Layla or Tears in Heaven, it would probably be a lot more interesting than those arrangements.
If Prince did Tears in Heaven, come on.
Oh, my God.
Come on.
It'd be the end of the world as we know.
Think about if he did it kind of in the style of I Can Never Take the Place of Your Man.
Wouldn't that be amazing?
What?
But he never chose to do that.
And I think part of it is, if you recall, Prince was always very reticent about talking.
Although he's, I think, incredibly smart.
Very smart.
You never see him on stage being like, so how's everybody doing tonight?
He's not a banter guy.
No, he's just like, he pretends to be shy.
It sounds like he's got bits.
Like he'll go, like if he wants to say, like he's got something prepared, but he's not going to be up there like making fun of Sean Nelson per se.
No, exactly.
And the thing about sitting on a stool with an acoustic guitar is what you're doing, you've got to be storytelling, right?
He's got to be standing up there like, let me tell you about... He's got to do like a Ray Davies or a Richard Thompson kind of thing.
Yeah, exactly.
When the water was warm for Lisa, let me tell you how that water got warm or whatever.
And we'd all be like, tell us more.
Because Wendy was peeing in the tub.
But he is not a gossip.
That's the thing.
Prince is not a gossip like I am.
So he's not going to tell stories about his friend's wedding.
So many facets to everybody.
Everybody's got facets, you know?
Yeah.
But anyway, I think he died because he was taking the medicine because he was such a hard dancer.
I didn't mean that.
He danced hard, and I don't want to drag it out.
But it is a multi-piece puzzle.
This is a lot to put together.
I'm so sorry.
I mentioned before we started recording—
My uvula is a little bit swollen.
The reason I keep clearing my throat every time after I say something is because if you can imagine what it feels like, like, you know, like when you got a cold and you got a post nasal drip.
I do know that.
Clear your throat because you feel like you're going to vomit.
Now imagine that, except that little punching bag is actually hanging so low that it will occasionally just touch the back of my tongue.
Oh, no.
So I feel like I'm going to vomit all the time.
So you're hanging low is what you're saying.
Your little ball sack is down the back of your throat.
Yes, yes, and my mouth's crotum.
That's gross.
Yeah, well, you know, cough due to cold.
Why?
What's happening?
Did you get a piece of floss around it?
I think it's because I suck.
I think it's because I suck.
I might have sucked too hard on something, and maybe I think that probably expanded it.
I've been eating a lot of ice cream.
That could be it.
I don't want to make this about me.
I'm trying to put all these pieces together.
One time I was...
I and my family were kind enough to be offered a visit to Pixar.
And we went with a friend of mine who's mildly famous and his family.
And he had to, this is up above nothing, but I remember my kid, it was before, what's the one with the red hair with Merida?
Is that brave?
Not brave.
What's it called?
Merida with the red hair one?
The Scottish girl?
I don't know.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Oh, it's a Pixar movie about a girl in Scotland.
Oh, a Pixar movie, yeah.
See, but you're not going to say who your famous friend is because you're not a gossip.
You don't want to say like, oh.
It's not important to the story.
It was a lonely sandwich.
What's important is the story, such as it is, is that he kind of, the guy, this tall man kind of waved at him.
And I kind of thought, oh, I think I know who this guy is.
I had not seen a lot.
I had not followed the TV program that he'd been on at the time.
I became a fan later.
It's Jim Krasinski.
And my semi-famous friend jogged over, talked to him for a few minutes.
Was he famous enough that Jim Krasinski knew who he was?
No, no.
I imagine they'd met doing things.
And, you know, in Hollywood, I don't say Hollywood, in L.A., if you work, like you just run into people a lot.
Well, I think like if you're in the business.
No, I'm not trying.
I mean, I'm not trying to steal valor.
But like if you're somebody who's been on TV shows, you get invited to things.
You run into other people and you do a lot of that.
What we used to call Zibba Zabba.
Don't you think there's a lot of zib-a-zabba?
And like, I don't know how well, I don't know if they've eaten like broken bread with one another's families, but they seem very cordial.
And then my semi-famous friend kind of jogged back.
Yeah, if you're standing in the lobby of the Chateau Marmont and the guy from The Fly comes in and starts playing the piano.
Jeff Goldblum?
You saw Goldblum?
Playing the piano in the Chateau.
Oh, I love him so much.
He sat down and everybody's like... He was in so many ads for the big game last night.
He was in a lot of ads.
There are a very, very limited number of people that you're going to be happy if they sit down on the piano in a hotel lobby and just start doing the show.
Nothing in this world would make Billy happier than running into – I can't think of anybody over time more than Jeff Goldblum probably.
Yeah, yeah.
His good luck thing that he – like sometimes he takes something on a trip is an Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park doll.
Oh.
Action figure.
He's a boy.
Yeah.
Uh, it's a, he's a wonderful performer and, uh, you know, maybe Steve Allen, if Steve Allen, you know, apart from his whole thing with being mean to Elvis and being kind of a dick about rock music, apart from that, you know, we wouldn't have David Letterman without Steve Allen.
A lot of people know that.
I think Letterman has been very clear about this.
There are, in addition to specific bits that he lifted from the old Steve Allen show, the whole idea of what he's doing started with Steve Allen.
Yeah.
The whole idea of what I'm doing started with Steve Allen.
Let's be honest.
What a gossip that guy.
No, come on.
Stop with that teasing.
I saw a documentary with Bruce Valanche in it recently and it didn't remind me of you at all.
Stop teasing.
I'm not teasing anyone.
I'm not teasing anyone.
You're teasing me by saying Bruce Valanche in the same sentence as me.
He was a writer on the Star Wars Holiday Special.
I can only imagine.
Well, the thing is, the thing people say about Bruce Valanche is not that funny and very not nice.
But I don't dislike Bruce Valanche at all.
He's hilarious.
I think he's funny as hell.
He was taking the piss, though.
He was definitely taking the piss.
But he's one of those...
He had, in a weird way, we were talking about L.A.
and Hollywood a minute ago, and I'm not entirely sure of the distinction.
But anyway, like, if you think about L.A.
Confidential, like, the character that Danny DeVito plays, the guy who writes for, like, the gossip rag.
He almost, like, he almost runs out, like, sort of a Truman Capote, sort of like that.
But somebody who's, like, outside, like, the center of the system.
Like, Bruce Valanche is no, like, Ava Gardner or anything.
But, like...
You know, he's seen a lot of shit go by.
I think if he walks into your party, that's when you know the party is going off.
Oh, my God.
Can you imagine?
It wouldn't matter how big of a star you were.
If Bruce Valanche is there, then you know that you're that big of a star.
I mean, to me, this is a gross exaggeration.
An extreme example of this would be Hunter S. Thompson, but a lesser example might be, say, Charles Bukowski or Philip K. Dick.
Like, if you were somewhere and Philip K. Dick rolled up.
In the 70s, you'd just be like, oh, if you were a certain kind of person, you would just be, holy shit, is that Philip K. Dick?
Like, you know, that kind of character where you're like, I almost didn't believe this person was real, and yet there's so much a part of my life.
You don't know how big a part of your life Bruce Valanche is until he rolls into your party wearing a funny t-shirt.
Well, it's like Dick Cavett was always talking about Karl Marx or whatever.
Bruce Flans did that?
No, no, no.
Dick Cavett did.
He couldn't get off the... Oh, you're talking about... I thought you said Karl Marx.
Yeah, Groucho Marx.
No, no, he's obsessed.
He's... Yeah, I was going to say Richard Marx.
But yeah, Groucho.
He was... Little dancing man.
When we did that show at the Chateau Marmont, he was always talking about Groucho the whole time.
Groucho this, Groucho that.
I became aware of that tick of his, and I became a little cynical about it.
But honestly, the more things I watched about Groucho, and the more things I watched about him and Groucho...
The more I came to appreciate, you know, for a younger person, younger than us, younger than we, it's difficult to, like, understand, like, what a big thing people like.
Eh, Dick Cavett, say, who's the English guy that interviewed?
David Frost.
But people, like, or for that matter, like, I was trying to tell my kid...
who didn't care.
We were watching the Truman Capote thing on Hulu and I was like, Truman Capote is the kind of character you don't see as much anymore, which is like, it doesn't matter if you've ever read a single page of Truman Capote, you totally know who he is and you vaguely understand why he's famous, but you know, he was, he was like, like everywhere.
And those kinds of characters, you know, used to be around.
I always thought that was going to be what happened with you.
I thought, I thought you, no, no, no, no, no.
I meant in the sense of you'd eventually, we'd eventually get tired of you and you'd be like the center square.
Oh, I see what you mean.
Yeah.
Well, that could also happen.
I was watching Dick Cavett interview Orson Welles just a couple of days ago on YouTube.
And it was one of those rare interviews with Orson Welles where you're like, this guy's great.
He's not being a dick at all.
No, no, no.
He was talking about Winston Churchill.
And I guess...
If you're Orson Welles, you can be a dick about everybody.
Orson Welles is funny as hell.
He's a very funny guy.
But he's a dick to everybody except you can't be a dick about Winston Churchill.
You can't be like, oh, yeah, Winston Churchill's constantly bugging me for advice, whatever career advice.
It was like, no, he actually had a nice anecdote about Winston Churchill.
And at that point, I realized...
I knew Cabot, or no, or knew, and Cabot knew Orson Welles, and Orson Welles knew Churchill.
I'm only three kisses away from Winston Churchill.
Oh, my God.
That's such an interesting way to look at it.
Yeah.
If I kissed Cabot, he kissed Orson Welles, Orson Welles kissed Churchill, and there it is, right?
There could be a little bit of Winston Churchill in me.
Oh, my God, you're right.
Everybody shook hands.
There might be some Neville Chamberlain in you, too.
Well, I guess Churchill probably shook hands with Neville Chamberlain, and Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Hitler.
Oh, my God.
This is taking a turn.
I read something, by which I may watch a YouTube video, that makes me think we've been a little hard on Neville Chamberlain.
Yeah.
But we've turned him into kind of like the way that Neville Chamberlain has been turned into the goat and the fool.
But not the greatest of all time.
You mean the goat like in the Charlie Brown sense.
Like Derek Jeter.
Yeah.
Oh, no, no.
Fuck that guy.
Fuck, no, no.
I take it back.
Fuck that guy.
Mariano Rivera.
Oh, Mariano Rivera.
Like a legitimate goat.
No, I see what you mean.
Yeah, okay.
But you're not saying that because we are hard on Neville Chamberlain that we've got to reevaluate Hitler.
I think part of this, am I saying that?
I don't know.
No, I don't.
Well, I mean, the thing is, I'm an open book in a lot of ways.
That's what this show used to be about, right?
I know.
I'm an open book in the sense that you could scribble in a way that makes it seem like I'm an idiot.
But, you know, it was my book.
You're the one who scribbled in it.
Not you.
You over there.
Right.
If you scribble in my book, shame on you.
If I scribble in your book and you scribble in my book, shame on me.
I think that's how it works.
It's a big puzzle.
Gosh, I have so many things to tell you about.
I know.
I know.
But you've got to save your uvula.
My uvula is still... Do you ever miss the GMCRB?
Uh, no, because of the moistness.
It's pretty moist, but also, like, when I asked that question, I could even tell I feel like you knew the way I meant that, which is like, because there's a lot of people who miss the idea of something, and those people are often, they're not living, you know, very self-reflective lives.
If you always miss the idea of something, you'll never be happy, because you also have to go like, well, I miss the idea of that, but I don't miss, like, for example, that time it kind of pooped out on you with the family in it on a road in Northern California.
More than once, it caught on fire.
Let's be honest.
All right.
Well, a fire, a fire is gonna, it's gonna leave a mark on the idea of something.
Well, you know, the other people love the, John, do you agree though?
People tell me you agree.
Don't people love the idea of something?
Yeah, they do.
They really do.
And I was at a funeral the other day of a, of a really nice guy and everybody loves him.
And I thought it was going to be a small funeral where there were like 10 people there and we were going to celebrate the life of this man.
And I got there and there were 900 people there.
And the governor of Washington gave a speech.
And then Paul Giamatti got up and read a poem his father had written and broke down in tears in the middle of the ceremony.
Oh, that's so sweet.
It was very sweet.
And I'm sitting there thinking, wait a minute, Paul Giamatti is not going to speak at my funeral.
And in fact, everybody at my funeral is going to get up and say some roasty thing about what a dick I was.
They finally have a chance.
They've been keeping this powder dry for years.
Yeah, they all got stories about some dicky thing.
And so I'm sitting there like, wait a minute, you know, I've wasted my life.
And I think to myself, who do I want to speak at my funeral?
And I'm sitting there thinking, and I'm thinking about everybody that's going to be lining up.
Wow, that's complicated.
Yeah, they're all going to be lining up to speak at my funeral and say something bitchy.
Also, you have to plan it before you die, so you don't know how things might go between now and then.
You have no way of knowing.
I think to myself, oh, wait a minute.
You know who I want?
It's I want Kristen.
I want Kristen to speak at my funeral.
She is so literate and so smart and so good.
And, you know, I haven't talked to her in about five years because I'm not sure something went sideways with us, but I'm going to text her once.
right now in the middle of this funeral.
I'm thinking good old Kristen, and there's something about Kristen, I'm guessing, that makes you think, I don't think I know who this is, but it's somebody that makes you think like, oh, that's a person who's like well-rounded, where we used to use mature.
It's somebody who's got it together and would be able to get up there and say something that would make the audience feel good about being there on the day at every time after John died.
Like somebody who could pull it off regardless of like what else was going on.
Exactly.
And she's going to say something for sure.
Like John was a complicated person and you know, not everybody.
And from time to time and you know, one thing you got to know about him, she's going to say all that stuff.
But in the end, it's going to read like a poem, and everybody's going to say, like we did about my friend who died, if Paul Giamatti gets up at your funeral and reads a poem that his father wrote and gets kerflempt about it, you've got to be some, you have to have made an impact on the world.
Put differently, that's going to be hard for you to top.
I text Kristen in the funeral and I go, look, we haven't talked in like five years.
I've got to talk to you.
I want, I want you to, you know, to be ready to speak at my funeral and to have something maybe prepared, but you know, to like, to like, uh, and she writes back and she goes, uh, she says, you know, basically at first she says what?
And then she says something to the effect of no, no,
And then she says, I know.
Something to the effect of, no, something you read clearly as an unambiguous, that is not going to happen?
Yeah.
And basically, because she's somebody, and I see this a lot, where I think maybe it might be a little, we've talked about it before, a little bit of a gender difference, where it's like, I don't want to still be your friend.
Oh, shit.
Is this somebody who used to be a lady friend for a while?
Oh, for years.
And she was a playwright and so gifted, so smart.
And I'm thinking, well, we'll be friends forever.
And multiple times over the 20 years that we knew each other.
She would have to say no, and I don't want to talk about why.
That's what she would have to say.
And I know it wouldn't work, but she should have said no, and I don't want to talk about it and tell you why.
And don't ever contact me again.
And the thing is, over the 20 years we've known each other, she's done that four times.
I don't want to talk to you anymore.
Apparently it's not working.
And I have said, well, but seriously, though, come on.
And she has gone, okay.
Do you remember what we had?
Do you remember what we said about forever?
But then we would have three years of great collaboration.
And then something would happen.
She would get married and she would say, I don't want anything to do with you anymore.
John was a complicated person.
And so I'm at this funeral and I'm already sad.
I'm already very moved by all the speeches and everything.
And then she's on my phone saying, no, not only will I not speak at your funeral.
It really makes you think.
But thanks for calling.
Oh, my God.
Delete this number.
The fragility of life, John.
You're sitting there with a phone in your hand talking to an ex who has just said, no way will I talk at your funeral.
I won't even get up and say something nasty at your funeral.
No, I'm blocking you.
As soon as I'm done with this, I'm blocking you.
Hoist by your own Krasinski.
Exactly what I thought my funeral was going to be.
Exactly.
You're already roasting me at my funeral and I'm not even dead.
Was she willing to recommend someone else?
No, she wanted nothing to do with the whole conversation.
And yet, I'll put a good word in with you with Kristen Schaal or something.
And she would not put a good word in for me or with me.
Do you think it's a dead end?
Will you return to that?
I'm sorry, I'm not saying she exists as a dead end, but in terms of the purpose you have here, do you think that's something, will you explore, will you go back in five years for a reason to Kristen, do you think?
Is it going to be something where I'm at an art gallery or a theater event or a college something, and she's there, and I walk over?
She and her kid are looking at colleges together, too.
Oh, and I'm like, hey, and she goes, no, no.
and then then walks away or is she gonna go okay or is she gonna go hi i don't think she's gonna go hi i think she's gonna throw her wallet at you and run away i don't know just take it you know or just like pick up a phone take a picture of me right in my face and go no
And put no under it or say like, not today, Satan, and then put it on TikTok.
Do you have any backups?
You got anybody?
Have you started?
I mean, I have to imagine that even at that moment, I don't know you well, but it seems to me at that point when you hang up, you're going to be, you know, steaming a little.
emotionally.
No, no, I'm not saying you're just mad, but you'd certainly be a little bit, bleh.
And like, did you start, did you open a notes document and start making a list of people you might want to contact?
Well, this is what I'm wondering.
I already have a notebook paper, a piece of notebook paper with the names of my ex-girlfriends and little check marks by them.
If they have told me, no, don't ever contact me again.
And it's starting to fill up.
An up-to-date index.
You're running out of, running out of women.
Does it need to be a woman?
I mean, is there any value?
And I would not really say this publicly, but do you think there's any value in covering the table a little bit?
Might it be smart for you to contact perhaps dozens of people and just get them 90% there?
And then like, as they start falling away over the years, the checks get added to the list.
There's still like four or five that by God forbid, the time you die, there's still somebody who could show up at the funeral.
Do you know how many boys are on the piece of notebook paper where they're not going to talk to me anymore?
It's like check marks all the way down.
Oh, there's boys on there, too.
There's a different page with all the boys.
Is PJ Novak in there?
Yeah, he's not ever going to text me again.
I'm not even going to be able to send him a wedding ring emoji.
But, you know, think about all the names.
What about Chef Lobster?
Did you ever follow up with Chef Lobster?
All of some of my greatest friends, they're all over there with check marks next to them.
They're not any of them going to speak at my funeral.
My funeral is going to have Ben Gibbard telling some story about what a dick I am.
And like four other people, four other baristas around here who are like, ah, he was a good tipper, but Jesus, he could talk.
It's complicated.
It is.
It is.