Ep. 554: "Kiel & Bach"
Who puts a microphone on a computer?
Hello?
Hi, John.
How's that?
Ah, fuck.
Oh, sorry.
Hello?
Ah, God fucking damn it.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Oh, what a morning.
What a morning you've had.
Boy, Gavolt.
Yeah, you still made it on time.
Good for you, man.
Well, hey, thanks.
i um cross town traffic i uh i woke up this morning and uh you know i got my daughter off to school and uh i feel like i feel like we're in uh adventures in babysitting and um yeah babysitting is hard
anyway i don't remember that was that elizabeth shoe who was in there yeah elizabeth shoe and they do some she gets up at some point like they they they're running from uh thor or some bad guys okay and they run into the back of a of a blues club in chicago and it's it's one of those mind if we dance with your dates moment you mind if we dance with your dates
Where it's an audience of, you know, entirely African-American people and the record.
It's always funny, John.
It's always funny.
Always hilarious.
And everybody look, you can hear pin drop.
Everybody looks at her and I swear it's like Johnny, John Lee hookers on stage.
And so she's like, sorry.
And they start to tiptoe off.
And then whoever, whatever the blues man is, the blues man says, nobody leaves until they play the blues.
Maybe it's Bo Diddley.
It's something somebody famous.
Bo Diddley did a lot of stuff.
yeah um he played he played i saw him at the cow house a few times he was practically in archers of loaf like he was forever coming through time he lived in like ginsville or something yeah he did and i wish i'd seen him because he you know love him love him love him yeah yeah but anyway so then elizabeth shue is like um and it's a fish out of water story john was the implication that uh that the hooker man was saying that when a person comes to the club then they have to play the blues
I don't think that's how that works.
If you get on the stage, because she had come in the stage, so she's on the stage.
Is that one of those things like not saying Macbeth?
Is that like a blues club thing?
I don't remember.
I've played some blues clubs.
I don't remember it.
I've played Chuck Berry's Mississippi Knights.
Did he get a photo of you making toilets?
Who knows?
I did use the toilet.
Da-da-da-da-da.
But the thing is I got up on stage and I did play the blues.
So I will never know if that's a rule, but it was one where it was like, oh, it's very threatening here.
It's a, here's the, the white girl from the suburbs.
And they're like, don't get off the stage and let it play the blues.
And then the band goes, bah, nah, nah, nah, nah.
And she goes, the adventures in babysitting.
And they do a whole number.
And at the end, everybody, everybody's happy.
Everybody loves each other.
It's a, it's a colorblind America.
Mm-hmm.
uh we've lost it's a regular it's a regular end of the parade and ferris bueller type situation right precisely we're all really you know one people yeah we're just one people one planet one people yeah yeah nobody's known each other in a pretty long time well yeah yeah for sure except unless you get unless you get insulted online then you're whoa
I like Elizabeth Shue.
I enjoy her.
I think she's very good.
She's a great actress.
You know, somehow last night I was online.
Somehow.
And I was researching something, as you do, and I was following some thread.
And I came to a page of IMDb.
Uh, you know, IMDB is a great mystery to me and I don't understand how people use it.
And I've been on there a million times and I still don't understand it, but I'm on a page that said, uh, that was a list of all the actresses who had won the Academy award and been nude in a film.
And whether or not they were nude in a film before they won the Academy Award or after.
Only six have won the award and then appeared nude.
It doesn't have to be fully nude, right?
We would count like boobies, right?
Well, I couldn't decipher from this page what nude meant.
Holly Berry did it a lot.
I thought there was one where she famously showed her boobs after she won the Academy Award.
I think that's true.
Only six people or six women have won the Academy Award and then appeared nude, whereas many, many, many people had appeared nude and then won the Academy Award.
Don't you kind of wish you were still in college sometimes?
Think about what you could write about that.
Girls Gone Wild.
Well, they do.
They do gone wild.
But also, you know, that's a pretty good paper right there.
That could work in several different buildings.
See?
Right.
And you know, the number one is tied for the most number of nude appearances in films by Oscar winners.
Okay.
And it is Nicole Kidman.
Oh.
And then Furiosa.
What?
Yeah.
I didn't know either of their boobs had been on display.
That's wild.
Yeah, 19 films they appear in some capacity.
Furiosa was in Cider House Rules, and you could see her bottom.
Right.
cider house cider house rules man um remember remember that i do i remember is that john that's one of the johns right is that an updike or achiever or whatnot who is that an updike achiever which is what i named my first son yep yep yep that's what they call the fault line out here the updike achiever falls
I don't know.
Okay, I'm typing this.
You know what's neat, though?
I agree with you.
One thing, I find a lot of things confusing about IMDb.
And I think a lot of people end up there because I want to find something out.
I'm not there to like, you know, I mean, sometimes once I'm there, I follow my nose.
But generally, I'm there to go, who's that guy in the thing?
Like, you know, we just finished my latest, latest, most recent rewatch of Game of Thrones, just wrapped season two.
And I was like, you know, I love that actor that plays Maester Lewin.
Like, he, R.I.P.
Like, he's really good in Death of, or not Death of Stalin, Chernobyl.
Like, he's good in lots of things.
So I'll go in there and be like, you know, I just want to find out who this person is.
So usually I start with whatever movie I'm watching.
But then I run into my first problem, which is the teeny, teeny, tiny photos.
The photos.
Oh, what can you tell from those?
Well, and like if I were going to remake IMDb, there's several things that I would do.
And one is that I would make some decisions, maybe as a user setting.
When you look up Thomas Crown Affair or you look up Italian Job, let's say that's a better example.
You look up at some old car movie.
You look up Italian Job.
Do you want to see photos of how they look at their oldest before they died?
Or do you want to see them how they looked around the time they were in this movie?
You're so right.
You want the IMDB page to represent the movie that you're looking up.
I get why we show Henry Winkler today.
I do understand that.
I get, but like, take a Dexter Fletcher, which is a terrific name, by the way.
Dexter Fletcher is a very different fellow from Band of Brothers to now.
Like, he looks pretty, pretty different.
Boy, we watched that recently, and boy, was it good.
But no, that's one thing I would do.
I would make the pictures bigger, you know, would be one thing.
But there's all these little hidden corners, too, that I'll mention.
Well, first of all, to acknowledge what you said, there are tons of perverts on IMDb.
Is that right?
Well, and I think in a wholesome way.
Well, the thing is, I was not looking for this page, right?
I did not go on and Google how many actresses have won the Academy Award.
I do that in Chatty PT all day long.
I'm forever doing stuff like that.
No, no, not because I want to see boobs, but just because I'm like and I again I do this all the time show me all the cast members where there's overlap between Death of Stalin Game of Thrones and Doctor Who and it'll move it'll just do that and that's because that's how my brain works, but so the perverts so first of all look at tags If you go to tags, you're gonna find some really extreme perversion that people is a tab You should see tags.
Let's pick a movie
And I'll, you know, all I want to do is have some fun down on Santa Monica Boulevard.
But what I want to do when, what I want, when I go on IMDb is I want to see bloopers.
Show me the bloopers first.
Oh, like goofs.
They got a section called goofs.
I love the goofs.
Yeah.
And that's another kind of fetish.
Oh, you can see the microphone in the shot.
Well, that's another kind of fetish.
I think as I've mentioned to you, there's a guy on IMDb who gets really mad if you get any part of a U.S.
soldier's uniform wrong.
Well, wait a minute.
There are message boards on IMDb?
Are there guys on IMDb?
No, but go pick something like, I don't know, Dirty Dezen maybe.
I don't know.
Just pick some movie that's got lots of- How about Force 10 from Navarone?
That's got a lot of people.
Harrison Ford?
Harrison Ford is in it.
Yep.
Okay.
Oh, and Force 10 is actually a song by Rush, too.
Really?
I was listening to Rush this morning.
I perfected side one of Permanent Waves.
Perfected it how?
I moved some things around.
It was not very good at first, but you remixed it?
I moved some things around.
I basically turned it into two perfect sides.
Side one, I moved Entree New onto the end of side one and moved Jacob's Ladder onto side two.
Oh, you're doing some remastering.
Something I admire with you.
I admire you and your sequencing.
What was I listening to yesterday?
I was listening to Color and the Shape by the great Dave Grohl.
And I was thinking that's another one.
Like, great, great sequencing.
And I improved it by making a pop side and a prog side.
uh i'm gonna force so anyway here here we are and and when i look at the photos they're so little they're so little john they are but it's a very recent photo of harrison ford but alan bedell who plays petrovich it's a picture of him from before the movie that's a picture that looks like him in like an alec guinness movie in the 50s yeah and then robert shaw it's a picture from the movie what the what the Richard keel photo is that you got to put jaws
Yeah, you got to put Jaws.
But anyways, that's why I would make it, I mean, first of all, guys, the whole reason people are here, I'm not going to cut this out, but I had a friend who worked at Amazon, and she worked on this product.
Amazon, you say?
Yeah, they own this.
And she interviewed me.
Perhaps you haven't noticed the occasional Amazon app.
Oh, I did, but I never put it together.
Now you know.
They own a lot of stuff.
Yeah, I think they own Zappos.
I'm not sure.
Anyways, but she and I, she was, you know, they're working on some things and she was one of those people I've been in her position.
You're in that pitiable position where I don't know who first said this, but something I like to quote, which is power is not the ability to say no.
It's the ability to say yes.
Yes.
right in an organization because the power to say no is like everybody's got the power to say no like no matter what your position is because you're like oh can i get a can i get a cheeseburger with a corvette on it and you go no but like who's empowered to say yeah you can have a cheeseburger with a corvette oh i see what you're saying like yeah who's who can put a corvette into space not me oh my gosh i saw a really good corvette one of those old ones the other day it was really good
Um, so, so the thing is, what I said to her was, look, and she's like, look, it's already kind of underway, but you know, I'm talking to people and like, I know you use it a lot.
And I was like, I know you've probably heard this, but the biggest thing for me is larger photos.
Like, and it's not even like just my bad eyesight.
Like I just did the, did the, the pressy any, zoomy any.
And then Robert Shaw looks like he's made out of JPEGs.
Yeah.
JPEGs.
The great Robert Shaw.
Just stacked up JPEGs.
You know him, you know what he does for a living.
Robert Shaw, he's died.
Catch a big fish.
He catches a big fish.
He's going to need a bigger boat.
For $2,000.
He'll find it for $10,000.
But he died.
Then that's too bad because there's a lot more.
They're all my friends and they all died.
Sorry.
Okay, so anyway, I'm looking at the goofs here.
Okay, so anyway, that was the thing.
Anyway, blah, blah, blah.
So, yeah, you see over there on your side rail, let's start with goofs.
Are there any goofs?
Now, beautifully, these are usually sorted by how many people have found this useful?
Oh, I see.
It's helpful.
Thumbs up and apparently unhelpful.
The thing is, don't take these at anything near face value.
Because famously amongst my cineast friends, cineastholes, that they, that like, no, some of these are not goofs.
Like you just didn't understand or no, that's just a blah.
And like, or is Stanley Kubrick sending me messages through the walls or whatever?
There's that kind of stuff.
But this first one got two down votes.
Yeah.
But it sounds very plausible to me.
mallory mallory pretend or mallory in the in uh forestan from navarone doesn't understand german but in the guns of navarone the character mallory is specifically chosen because he speaks blue and german okay that's so what are you supposed to that's a that's a real goof because it goes back to the novel it goes back to the alistair mcclain novels okay
Why does he get two thumbs down?
Who are the haters?
Oh, dude, don't never look at the down thumbs.
Like on YouTube, it'll ruin your day.
I mean, there's kids getting cochlear implants and people are like, next.
Seems like something to celebrate.
She's fat.
Would not hit that.
Dude, it's a little deaf girl.
Don't be a dick.
Would not hit that.
No, no, that's the kind of thing that the thumb down people say.
But there's that.
Now, some of these get a little silly.
And there's quotes.
You know, you got your quotes.
That's a good section.
What I want to point you toward is I can never find it because this site needs so much help.
plot keywords so under storyline over there in your right rail look for plot keywords right rail more to explore editorial lists user lists user polls we all know how painful that can be we're looking looking for uh you know i might be able to just give you a url you can look for what uh oh it's called uh
Plot, holes, crew, or equipment visible?
Okay, so do you see, like, I'm sorry, I'm on the Mac on a computer, so I don't know.
But, like, if you find plot keywords, that's where it gets interesting.
Because you're going to see here, plot keywords for Force 10 from Navarone include, and there are many.
Can I just want, like, five?
Yeah, go ahead.
Not top five, but the ones here.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay, here's one.
Kiel and Bach, which I take to mean a movie that has Richard Kiel and Barbara Bach.
Oh, Kiel and Bach.
Somebody took the time to mention, which again, not yucking on a yum, you got Epic War, Female Unity.
Kiel and Bach sounds like one of those hand lotions that you get for free at the Chateau Montmartre.
Is this your first time dining with us?
We do things a little bit different at the Marmohat.
Oh, that Keelan Bakke.
Oh, we have it down in the gift shop.
Also, our blankets.
Keelan Bakke's $100 if you don't want to.
It also could be, that could also be a cafe slash gastropub slash butcher in Portland.
Right, Keelan Bach.
Yeah.
Epic War, female nudity, female topless nudity, Keelan Bach.
Mission Enemy.
Female topless nudity.
So then what you do is you click on, let's not do that one.
But if you click on, let's click on Keelan Bach.
I'm clicking.
Barbara Bach is the only woman in that entire movie.
There's not a second woman.
Yeah.
So it's got to be her nudity, right?
But I don't remember the scene.
I think you just did like, God, my kid's been taking practice SATs.
You should teach a class because you just did a really, you're like, you just did that.
You're riding on a train.
You know, Robert Shaw has a deck of cards.
There's a man in yellow pants.
What stop do you get off at?
Those kinds of things.
You've got the mind for that, Sean.
You could teach that.
Yeah.
Here it is.
Well, here you go.
I hope it's not a disappointment to you.
Under Kiel and Bach, there are two films.
One is Force 10 from Navarone from 1978, and the other one a year later, less well-reviewed, is called The Humanoid.
Hoping to overthrow his brother as ruler, the evil girl uses a chemical capable of turning the pilot Golob into a mindless but indestructible automaton possessing superhuman strength.
That's got Kiel and Bach.
Oh, geez.
But, but you see where I'm going with this, which is like, think of your most like out there thing.
And like, there's probably somebody that's been curating a way to find all the movies with what I like to call it in my family.
You call it someone's special thing.
Cause everybody's got a special thing.
We don't be weird about don't kink shame.
Stop telling me what to do, but I'm not doing anything.
I'm not shaming anything.
I'm not kinking anything.
What I'm saying is that the America is a land of contrasts.
Yes and crowdsource taxonomy is changing the game for people who want to see like Women tied to a car with one boob out or whatever like somebody will find their special thing You know like you know and it could be stuff like maybe you're into ladies being giants and they eat you like a lot of people that want ladies I'm trying to try and this is a family show
I mean, not from my family, obviously.
Mine either.
John, that was funny.
That was funny.
Yeah.
So anyway, that's a good way.
I also want to tell you about a, hey, I want to tell you about something I like.
Go ahead.
Is this your thing that you're online looking for?
Is it feet?
No, I've done that.
No, no, just I already have all the Quentin Tarantino movies.
But the thing is, I know there's a really good page where you can find out.
Boy, this is really good podcasting.
You can find where people have worked together.
And I don't think they do enough to bubble this up.
See, Ariella loves this.
Oh, this person was in that movie with this person.
Oh, we talked about this.
This is why we're so much better suited.
I'm going to send you a link for this in our private text channel.
So what you do is you can go in.
This is in a section called collaborations.
So you can look for two people in the same... Look for two people that have been in the same title as in a movie.
Of course, now, IMDb is all... Isn't this just Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?
I mean, I think... I mean, it's very similar to that, but another one... But, like, this would also be a way to say, well, let's prove for sure that Keelan Bach, we've got the normalized names for these actors, you could put in, like, Pacino and De Niro and, like, see what shows up.
yeah there's just the one right or the okay robert shaw and luke skywalker is what i put in there oh wait i put that into our text i just texted you rabbit shaw and luke skywalker that's pretty that's pretty no it's no keel and buck i wish i can heal keel and buck what do you like people could really be around buck and keel right buck and keel
Fucking kill pocket.
Didn't they sing that song diamond girl?
But that way you can find out so like I want to find if I want to find out how am I gonna find out where we just saw last week my my kid and I went to see the very interesting Francis Ford Coppola movie Michaelopoulos
which I will be thinking about every day for the rest of my life.
And I was thinking, like, oh, there's some weird overlap.
Like, I noticed Jason Schwartzman and Aubrey Plaza are both in this movie.
And it occurred to me, I could think of at least one other movie that they're in, which is Scott Pilgrim versus The World.
So you could go in and just put in two people you're interested in.
That doesn't have to be your special thing, unless Richard Kiel's your special thing.
The truth is, John, I'm ready to go public with this.
Richard Kiel is my special thing.
Richard Keel is your special thing.
Yeah.
No, here's the, here's what's crazy.
I put Robert Shaw and diamond girl into IMDB and it came up with it.
Well, I'm just trying to figure out what it does.
And it came up.
Did you get seals and croft.
Episode 97 of Laughing Monkey Music.
Here we go.
And now we get into podcast video games.
Let me finish.
King Diamond and Merciful Fate drummer Snowy Shaw was on episode 97 of Laughing Monkey Music podcast.
But then why is our podcast in here?
Oh, I don't.
It's all gummed up with voice.
I mean, listen, all work is important.
All careers matter, right?
Yeah, sure, sure.
But like, I mainly... And you can sub-sort by this, of course, as I told our friend at Amazon.
They could really make the filtering more easy to understand.
I think... Because like, if you go in and you just go look up Edgar Wright, like, you're going to also see stuff that he produced.
You know, it could be like, if it's John Carpenter, you're going to see music that he wrote and stuff like that.
And generally, I want... I mean...
80% of the time it's a movie no 70% of the time it's a movie 30% of the times TV show and I generally want to find an actor or a director like so but like voiceovers Video games like go look up.
Oh my god.
Have you ever looked up James Hong on IMDB?
Well, no the thing is I we have already spent more time on IMDB now than I have ever done before could you put aria on?
Yeah, well, she's at work because she actually has a job.
Oh, I see.
That's why she's not there.
Yeah.
So she's at work and I'm here talking to you.
Will you tell her about this advanced collaboration search?
Never been to IMDB for any reason other than by accident.
I would have found women tied to cars with one boob out.
One boob out.
It's got to be in there.
Ooh, auto boob.
1978.
That sounds good.
Auto boob.
I don't know.
Yeah, but you know, excuse me.
No, that's all right.
That was worth a ding, whatever it was.
I slept weird.
But yeah, it's frustrating.
So after I got my daughter to school.
Yes.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
I went over.
I had Ari drive me across town to the old farm, to my old farmhouse, because the people that bought the farm for me, and that doesn't mean that they died, but they actually purchased the farm for me.
They're actually farmers, sir.
They're moving to New York, and they said, hey, you left a bunch of stuff here, and we've been using it for the last five years.
Like your piano and your dining room table and all of these pots and a bunch of stuff.
You sure it's not an Airbnb?
You sure you sold it to them?
There's a whole box full of switchblades.
That's so weird.
But also both your Vespas.
Yeah.
Out in the barn, huh?
And I went and I got the Vespas and I drove the gray one home last week.
And this morning I went and got the orange one.
And I started to drive it home and it conked out.
Oh, John.
And I got it going again and I drove it further and it conked out.
Because it felt to me like the carburetor was full of chewing gum.
Any vehicle that sits for a while, you generally try to avoid that, right?
You got to start it every once in a while and that kind of thing.
It probably just needs a little bit of look-see, right?
Yeah, what it needed was probably some octane boost in the engine, but I was out in the middle of no place.
Is it like a moped?
Do you have to mix oil and gas?
You do Merlin.
It's a two cycle motor.
There you go.
And so I'm sure that whatever that two cycle oil was sitting in there and it became anyway, it was rubber.
And so the guy, Matt, who, who bought my house, who's moved to New York, who's kind of like a task rabbit sort of a handyman character.
He came out and picked me up.
We put it in the back of his truck and drove it home.
And I got home.
You know, you and I were texting, like, are you going to be able to do the show?
And I was like, I don't know.
I might be sitting on the side of the road for two hours.
I couldn't believe in a million years you'd be able to make a here on time.
And I got home at 10.55, just in time to do the show.
Insane.
And now I have two Vespas in my garage, where a week ago I had zero Vespas in my garage.
I like that trend line.
How does that make you feel?
It makes me feel envious because, you know, I like little transport.
You know what I mean?
Yes, you do.
My best friend John in Ohio, I don't know the history of this, but as of 1978 anyway, you only need to be 14 to ride a moped.
Yeah.
Drive a moped.
And he had a moped.
And I was pretty envious of him.
Because that's a hell of a way to get around Cincinnati, Ohio when you're 14.
Oh, it is.
Well, you know, I bought this one when I was 15.
You're kidding.
It looks so vintage.
Well, I guess it was.
That was a long time ago.
It was a long time ago.
You're vintage.
What's crazy is it's a 75 and I bought it in 80...
what three and at the time that was like dude this thing is vintage it's like eight years old i know i know and now it's like really old it's like 50 years old now
I was mentioning the other day that my housemates and I, my third year of college, this is true, that our house would get disgusting and we'd have to clean it.
And we'd do it, all three of us.
And we discovered, after trying various kinds of music, the two best kinds of music for cleaning your house are March Music slash Leibach,
Or Metallica.
Old Metallica.
And it was just occurring to me that that was in 1988, which means at that time, Old Metallica was like three years old.
Oh, my God.
Old Metallica, not that new crap like Master of Puppets or whatever.
I was going to say, what if it would have been Master of Puppets?
No, I love Master of Puppets.
That's why this came up.
I was talking about how much I love that record last night.
Now we put on Ride the Lightning.
There's nothing like cleaning to...
Or like, you know, any of those are good.
But also Leibach can be good.
Or just Susan marches on cassette are nice, too.
That's nice.
But isn't that the kind of thing, though?
It hits you.
I don't want to change the topic at all, because I want to get back to this.
But like, at the time, it's like, God, this thing's...
You know, it's true for so many things in my life where it's like something that was not, I don't want to say old.
The way I put it, how about this?
Like when you think of a band that you enjoyed in the 80s or 90s, and like when I think of the quote new album by thus and such, like for every band that I love, I can tell you what I still think of as the quote new album, which is impossibly particular to me, but it's really instructive because you go like, oh, this new, the new New Order album.
Came out 35 years ago.
Yeah, or you know what I mean?
Like well, I thought photograph was the Def Leppard record where they where they jumped the shark I was telling somebody that I was remembering that when I was in college my bandmates and I were having a discussion about whether bug by dinosaur junior was just a little too poppy
Because I was used to You're Living All Over Me.
Well, if you think about when R.E.M.
Green came out, I was like, nope, nope, this band's over.
Over.
Absolutely.
Green was just like, what is this?
90 Happy People?
Forget it.
I'm going to write that down because we need to talk about R.E.M.
someday.
But yeah, I mean, I listened, I bought, I attended, I did all of those things like...
longer than was Seemly.
But like, yeah, for me, the new REM album would be, not Fables, but probably Green, Green or Monster.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, Monster, Monster was, Monster was a long way after.
That's the one where, well, okay.
The one that came out after I arrived at New College, there's two REM records that I remember coming out when I was in college.
One was Document.
I don't remember the years on this exactly.
Oh my God, Document, what a record.
Yeah, that's a pretty good record.
Document and Dead Letter Office.
which I had heard.
My friend Michael had made me a tape of those B-sides and stuff, all that stuff they recorded for Reckoning and didn't use.
Yeah.
But I'm sorry.
I'm not very good to do a podcast with, am I?
No, no, no.
That's not true at all, Merlin.
You're one of the greatest podcasters that ever lived.
When you say something that extreme, it feels like you're being a little bit dishonest with me.
No, no, no.
It's not true.
When the story of podcasting is written, there's going to be, you're going to be a lot of ads.
There's going to be a lot of ads for mattresses.
It's going to be, well, you know what?
Have you tried therapist in a box?
It really helped me.
When the story of podcasting is written, it's going to be a podcast.
It's so recursive.
Oh, that's a good point.
This story shall the good man tell his son.
You know what I'm saying?
It's a Henry V type situation.
Who's going to do the podcast about the story of podcasts?
Oh my goodness.
You know, I bet it's Dan Benjamin.
Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Because when I said, Hey Dan, am I the first generation of podcasters?
He was like, no, no, not even close.
I was surprised you'd find out you've mentioned that a couple of times before.
Well, you know, it hurt my feelings.
Yes.
But then I had to realize, like, you know, he's right.
I am.
Well, you know, in psychology, you got primacy and recency.
You remember the first thing, you remember the last thing.
So maybe you could be sort of like that Jeff Bridges movie.
You could be the last podcaster.
The last podcaster.
I like to think I'm the last podcaster who cares.
The last podcaster who really cares about his art.
Yeah, yeah.
Did you hear that Sean Nelson has a podcast now?
No, it was about the Smiths.
So Sean Nelson said to me in 2012, when I was like, hey, we should start a podcast.
He was like, podcasting's over.
It's too late for me to get a podcast because the market is full.
Yeah.
And I was like, I don't think that's true.
I think you would be, I mean, he would be a great podcast.
Well, I mean, the honest thing is everybody understandably looked down their nose at it.
It was lesser, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, he apparently has one now where he's talking to one-hit wonders, which is a great idea.
Oh, my God.
Well, it's so funny you should say that.
Just this morning, Madeline, who drove to work this morning, said the new Not A Surf is A+.
I think get Matthew on that show, that would count as a one-hit wonder, probably.
Yeah, they had one hit, but a great career after one of the rare.
Well, that's the thing.
I happen to know another guy who had one hit, but also did a lot of great stuff.
Who?
Name him.
Wow.
Wow.
You're making this really awkward for me.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Let's hear it.
The Marlboro man died of cancer, and he wasn't a rocket scientist when he was alive.
Ha, ha, ha.
Yeah, well, that guy.
That's the one we were talking about.
Well, that's why I said it.
Oh, I see.
I should have texted you.
I'm sorry.
I see.
Yeah, I get confused.
Really waking for the important meetings.
But, you know, but of course, you know.
Sean's funny as hell.
I'm not going to listen to it.
You know, that's like, whatever, whatever, whatever.
Why would you start listening to podcasts now?
No, I wouldn't, and I'm not going to.
But anyway, it's out there for people who are like, oh, Sean Nelson, I hear all about him on Roderick on the Line.
Maybe I should find out about this guy.
Wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
Huh.
How does a TaskRabbit afford a house?
Well, you know, this is a big question, and I got to think.
I wasn't going to say anything.
I got to think it was her parents' money is what I got to think.
Maybe she's a doctor.
I felt weird at the time because I had an offer on the house from a nice couple, and they were like, look, we live in Rainier Valley already, and we're tilth farmers, and we have two kids, and we want to take your farm and actually take it.
We know this matters to you, John, back to the time when you were thinking about selling stuff on eBay and like you wouldn't have a card.
It was really somewhere between was less selling and more curation.
Like you want to vet the people who are going to be in your in your spirit house.
That's right.
And I was like, you're perfect for this.
But their offer.
was under my asking price and it was contingent on the inspections and this and that you know it's just standard real estate stuff but i was like oh i felt so like defeated because i'd i thought oh i'm gonna sell this house for x and now i have to sell it for y it's less money and now there's business
Now there's business and I got to deal with it.
But you know, they wrote me a thing and they were like, we're going to grow organic corn and we're going to sell it at the local market.
And I was like, I love you people so much.
You're exactly who I want.
Wait, wait, wait.
That's the task family?
No, no, no.
This was the other thing.
Oh, the ones that you, I see, I see, I see.
But yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm sitting in the real estate agent's office and I'm like, okay, well let's sell it to these people.
You know, there were a couple of offers that were a little bit more, but I was just like, I don't want to sell it to somebody that's like software.
I want to sell it to these tills farmers.
And I actually signed the papers and was like, sell it to the people.
And, you know, the fact that I didn't get all the money doesn't matter because God and the Bible.
Because life is precious and God and the Bible.
It is.
Life is precious.
And I went out and I sat in the car and I didn't drive away.
I sat there.
Did you use a fake signature?
No.
Nope, no, I was done.
I was done.
And I sat in the car and I was like, it's not like I sat in the car weeping, but I did sit in the car and like, well, it's the end of an era.
Cause I didn't have another house.
I was like, I guess I'm living in my car and I sold my house.
And then I'm sitting out there for 10 minutes.
And then the real estate agent's assistant.
comes running out into the parking lot, taps on the window.
Really?
And I rolled it down, and she was like, we got another offer.
And I was like, another offer.
And she said, it's a full-price offer, and they waive all inspections.
What?
I mean, independently, this is a Dutch auction type situation.
Do people not know what the others are offering?
No, they don't.
The real estate business is so crazy because it is.
It's like an auction.
Like, well, okay, these other people had a toy.
It was old fashioned when my mom did it in 1974.
And it's still weirdly old fashioned today.
The whole reason I moved out here was for a dot com job at a real estate dot com.
And like the douchebags, not the douchebags, but my dear friends who were the business people there would say, you know, real estate is a contact sport.
It really is all about like glad handing and sales and old timiness.
And they teach classes on steering.
So you don't say black people can't live here.
But like it's a really hidebound until they this big upheaval, not until, but especially now that we've had this big upheaval with what realtors can charge.
And by the way, realtor, I know very well from my career that that is a registered trademark of the National Association of Realtors.
Is that right?
You can't be a realtor unless you're a realtor for the National Association of Realtors.
But also, you know, you got brokers, you got agents.
I don't know fuck all about this.
I'll never own anything.
I don't own this iced tea.
Well, you know, but I bet you got good terms leasing that iced tea.
Oh, fantastic.
And I got to pick which rabbits lived here.
Well, that's the thing.
That's quite a twist.
When you're done with that iced tea, you don't have to, it hasn't declined in value.
It's not full of gum.
Yeah.
yeah anyway i go in and i'm like okay all right so what do i do and the real estate agent like tears up the piece of paper that i had signed and says and so i look at the little letter that they wrote me the new couple and they're like we're a young couple and you know and he's a handyman and we're gonna we're gonna give you know we're gonna waive inspection because we can fix any problem wow and uh and we're we want to start a family
And I was like, oh, well, this is good.
You know, it's not like tilth farmers, but they want to start a family.
The farm is perfect for that.
And he's going to get the swimming pool going, which I never managed to do.
You used it, but not for swimming.
You used it to host a lot of moist lumber.
I did that in the end.
I used to go in it and just stand there and look up at the stars and be like, Oh my God, like somebody in a Robert Altman movie.
Yeah, basically, you know, I live alone, right?
I never thought it would end up like this.
I'm in the deep end.
I can't afford water.
Just like, yeah, absolutely.
Like every day of my life back then was the end of a really weird, sad movie.
Yeah.
but now times like that absolutely yeah they've had two kids and she has come to the what i think is logical inescapable conclusion that she needs to be around her mother because two kids is a lot yeah yeah yeah and uh she's living out here man you know you need your you need to help it takes a bill it does and she actually said to me
when I came over to the house, she was like, it takes a village.
And, and I was like, it does take a village.
Cause if I hadn't had my mom, it would have been 10 times harder.
And so, but the thing is, he is like, I don't want to move to New York.
And I'm like, well, I know, but it takes a village.
And he's like, well, yeah, but you know, I got all my task rabbit clients out here that I got people that'll pay me $40 to change a light bulb.
i'm like well yeah there are those in the bronx too i'm sure anyway i got into their marriage like right away um because they were like do you want this old do you want this box of switchblades and i was like i do i'll be right over and then i walked in the house and it was like it takes a village like it whoa i'm in i'm in all the way let me let me talk to you about your because i'm you know i'm a great marriage counselor one of the best oh i imagine i bet you see i bet you see insight nobody else sees
that's the thing that's the thing it's one of your superpowers that we don't like to talk about too much but you uh you see vulnerability even when it's not presently happening currently happening i do i can i can see in the cut of your sweater and in the in the blank look in your eye pretty much what's going on with you all the way all the way and so another thing is that this often it's a problem
because I'm like, well, here, you know, I've got some insight.
No, you're Cassandra, right?
Where the fuck did you come from?
Exactly.
And really, nobody wants your input, but you're the one that might, well, not save the marriage, but maybe you could finally give it a euthanasia ending, you know?
Well, there's a lot of marriages.
It's a death cab for kids.
You never know what's going to, you know, my parents would have, their marriage would have stayed together.
if my dad had given my mom the checkbook and let her take care of it they'd still be married probably i mean my dad would have would have probably been still alive and not even just from the beginning but if like even by like what the late 60s or whatever the late 60s if he had gone you know what why don't you just deal with the bank
uh my mom would have been like great and all of her fears would have gone out the window and my dad wouldn't have had to worry about anything and the job would have been done by the person that was good at the job that wanted to do the job and not been done by the guy who was bad at the job and didn't want to do the job but that tiny little thing of like here why don't you uh why don't you book the travel and you take care of the banking
um but you know what are you what are you gonna do you can't i can't go back in time and say hey this is really obvious right absolutely yeah yeah and i don't know you know if my parents had been uh had been married uh through my childhood maybe i would have gone to yale maybe i'd be the president of the united states right now you might be worse well it could be raining you could be the retired head of the cia for at this point and you know i'd be so good at that
Oh, I think you would.
I think you'd be very gracious about a lot of things.
You know, I'd be a shoo-in for the sheriff of Twisp if I was a retired head of the CIA.
Come on.
Because you wouldn't have to worry about security clearances.
And also, I think you're less like, well, I mean, I don't want to sound cynical, but you're probably a little less likely to be a grifter.
than somebody who's just blowing through town.
So Ari said, you know, Ari works at startups.
She's been at startups for the last 20 years.
Most of them are CEO-led startups, and she's got a lot of experience with CEOs, CEOs, CEOs.
She's a CMO, so she's in those meetings with the CEO.
And she's all got tons of, tons of problems with CEOs.
She's like, no CEO should ever run their own company.
I'm sorry.
No, no person that started a company should ever run it.
They're terrible at being CEOs.
They should be C, they should be CTOs.
If they started a software company or a hardware, whatever, they should be a CTO and they should hire somebody to do the CEOing.
And I'm like, okay, yes.
And then she has started to say, you know who would be a good CEO?
You.
And I'm like, me?
Little old me?
CEO.
CEO.
She says, you are a born CEO.
Does that imply that the CTO, who's the real genius of the operation, is someone else then?
No, the CTO is the founder of the company, the person that developed the software.
For less the Zuckerberg or whatever, right?
Yeah, the one that knows how it works.
Mm-hmm.
But those people, it's the old graduate student thing that I used to say.
The person that is good at being a graduate student is by definition terrible at being a professor.
In civics and politics, the person who's a great revolutionary really turns out to be an even-handed ruler.
That's right.
That's right.
And people that are good at campaigning for public office are not necessarily good at being public service.
Sing it, sister.
So she's like, every founder of a company should immediately be the CTO.
That should be the job that they all think is the cool one.
And the CEO should be somebody that likes to come in and see the big picture and keep calm and do the deals and make the business and run the company in the way that the person that founded it has no interest in doing it.
They don't want to deal with people.
They don't want to deal with clients.
They want to do the beep-boop-beep-boop-beep that keeps the thing that keeps developing.
Not feeling constantly interrupted, like maybe they lead a team of developers or whatever, but they are kind of walled off to do the tech stuff.
And I don't want to make the obvious joke here or obvious observation, but there really is kind of a... There's a sad trail that has been drawn by all these people.
Okay, I'm going to say the mean thing.
Just because you're good at one thing doesn't mean you're good at other things, let alone everything.
True and also true.
So just because like, and again, I mean, that could be like one reason people get bummed about Apple sometimes is that the current CEO's background is in operations, which is not a bad thing at all.
But he does think about the bottom line and thinks about like, will this widget cost a dollar more?
Like, can't we just use the old widget or, you know, those kinds of things.
But like, that's the color of your crystal, like where you came from.
But like, you wouldn't want some weirdo running the company to,
You know, who basically just writes all his emails in the terminal or whatever.
Well, and here's the other thing.
The people that become CEOs that aren't CTOs all are MBAs.
Because they think that MBAing is the same as CEOing.
And vice versa.
And sort of apropos of what we were saying two minutes ago, like, I believe in my head, nobody ever asked me about this on a podcast, but I'd love to talk about it.
There's a big difference between a boss, a manager, a leader.
a mentor there's big differences between all those things we might call those similar things we might think of it as a venn diagram but like you know if you're in a sales driven team that person is still making sales while you're making sales so you're kind of competing there's all kinds of ways that like just because your castro is good at overthrowing the government doesn't mean he'll be good at like you know finding up-to-date auto parts
That's right.
And a lot of companies, especially startup companies, what the CEO needs to be is visionary.
I was going to say CVO is what I was thinking.
Chief Visionary Officer.
And the problem with MBAs is in order to be an MBA, you are by definition are not visionary.
An MBA is a thing.
It's like makes it look like business is a science or business is a thing that you can learn and do.
Yeah, it's got the patina of – I don't know.
I don't have an MBA.
I don't particularly want one.
But like it does have that patina of like a little bit of like academia.
But like, you know, a lot of – You just went through the thing.
It's like being a graduate student.
Yeah.
If you're good at being in college, you're not necessarily good at inspiring people, at having a vision for the future, of being able to see all the things in motion at once.
A lot of people asking incompatible things of you at the same time.
I mean, I think one of the key tests of early adulthood that continues, believe me, forever, is that you're going to have all these Kobayashi Marus coming at you all the time.
There's all kinds of things where there is no good work.
There is no, you could be less bad, but there's no decision here that's going to be good.
And that is, I mean, obviously that's amplified a million times if you're like president or something, or for that matter, CVO.
But you know what I mean?
Like it's, there are a lot of people who crumble a little bit at that idea of like satisficing and saying like, well, we're going to assertively pick this route that has risks to it.
And that's what we're doing, right?
Mm-hmm.
And like the kind of person who gets really good at writing papers about Beowulf, like, you know, I don't know if they should be your CVO or maybe they should precisely because of that.
Well, you know, like I I'm not the one who's saying that that I am that I'm a CBO.
You've gotten you've gotten an endorsement.
I don't know what this is called on LinkedIn, but I think you've gotten endorsed basically by somebody who's a serial entrepreneur who is really kind of giving you an upvote to say this is a this is this is a man with vision.
Well, you know, every time I mention LinkedIn, I get like 60 new LinkedIn connections because people listening to the show obviously are on LinkedIn.
That's blogging for divorced men.
So if you want to go on LinkedIn and give me a thumbs up for CEOing or CBOing, you know, I think the real visionary is going to be the founder CTO that says, you know what we need?
We need to think outside the box.
We need a Roderick in here.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Invent the future.
Be the ball.
See the ball.
See the ball, Danny.
And my friend Jeff used to say, you know, we couldn't get a seat at the table, so we built our own table.
You can just use that.
I love that.
Isn't that good?
I'm going to say that in the interview when they bring me in.
And I'm like, listen.
I figured you'd be.
I already have the job.
What's that thing in Hollywood where you do like, where you don't do, there's a name for like when you become kind of more of a name where you don't like try out for things.
Offer only, is that what it's called?
Offer only.
I think it's called offer only, where you go to like, I don't know.
I mean, who?
You go to Charlize Theron.
Offer only was like some kind of like a meat stick.
From Chef Boyardee.
Hey, hey, you got to finish your offer only?
Offer only.
That's a no good boss.
How am I going to find out what I got to find out if you didn't find out what I got to find out?
That's a no good.
That's a no good.
Lots and lots of mozzarella.
You should show your kid duck soup.
Can I just say?
You know, there's so many things.
I was thinking about, oh, God.
Did you show your kid, oh, God?
No.
With George Burns?
I tried the Sunshine Boys, which I think is a better movie.
And I mean, we're not going to make any progress on George Burns.
Yeah, I tried to.
You know, the one that I thought was funny was the one where the three old men rob a bank.
Going in style.
Yeah.
That's a great movie.
It's such a great movie, but it's so depressing.
You know who's in that?
In his second role ever, Lee Strasberg.
Lee Strasberg is in that.
It's his second role ever, after The Godfather.
If the money's on the table, I know I have a partner.
I give a million just to have a piss without hurting.
If it's not, I know I don't.
I never asked who gave the order.
I didn't ask.
His name was Mo Green.
I always found his chest hair very upsetting in that movie.
He was a very furry little fella.
I like yours better.
Yours is more Tolkien-y.
He's a furry little fella.
You're looking for positions offer only.
By the time you have me down there, you already know.
You already know it's my job to lose.
And what I'm going to say is whatever you said about an offeroni.
I'll be happy to work on the back channel, as you say.
But you get examples of this, though.
Wait, I have two good examples of this from fairly recently a pretty famous one is when they were making the Marvel movies and In the and so basically, you know, there's a different universes.
There's the six one six the main universe There's the other universe of famous one is the ultimates universe and the ultimates universe So Nick Fury was always a white guy with a flat top from the like the war comics And then when they did when Brian Michael Bennis did the ultimates universe he did
Nick Fury as a black man, and he based the art on an actor that he likes a lot.
And when it came time to cast the movie, posposably, they said, hey, you know how you kind of look like that guy in the comic, Samuel L. Jackson?
That's not a coinkydink.
That's no coinkydink.
There you go, like right there.
There's lots of stories of this where somebody asks for like a John Roderick type, and you go, hey, why don't you hire John Roderick?
He's the original VO.
Well, you know, that's how the Long Winters got that Fiat ad.
the guy that was cutting the fiat ad together was using uh fire island as his music because he was the editor and they were like make it 140 beats per minute and he was like oh i have a song that i like that does that he cut it together and then he showed it he showed it to the clients and they were like it's perfect as it is and he said well oh i was just using this music
But we don't have the rights to it.
Do you think you might want to get more songs?
Like, I don't know if this is considered, as you would say, as a CVO.
I don't know if this is a boil the ocean business model.
But do you think you might want to get more songs in front of people?
Like, I've heard this about Max Richter, who's one of my favorite modern composers.
Songs from a Blue Notebook.
There's a song from that called, I think it's called On the Nature of Daylight.
And it's in everything.
Like that scene that makes you cry in Arrival.
And he did the music for The Leftovers.
But he's got this song, the famous song called, I think it's called On the Meaning of Daylight.
And it's so popular amongst people roughing together edits that a lot of times people are like, yeah, yeah, just go get that song.
That needs to be you.
Well, that's what I would love.
I keep waiting for some big time.
I keep waiting for whoever it is that listens to this show for one of those people to end up being a big time director.
Or just to help us in any way.
Not to pretend to help and not to email about helping, but to actually assertively go out and improve our lives without the need for us to acknowledge them.
Is that too much to ask?
I keep waiting for two Sprinter vans and five black SUVs to just pull into my driveway with no...
do they throw you in the back i well that's the thing i look out the window and i'm like oh fuck here it comes yeah yeah yeah and then it's jj abrams and he's bought you a coffee exactly a bunch of guys jump out with with the with ear earpieces and black sunglasses and they come to the door and i'm like oh here i go like we're traveling we have number one that kind of that's right this is like some rendition thing
Yeah.
Extraordinary.
And then a door opens in one of these fancy vehicles and a guy in a cashmere t-shirt with like shaggy hair and loafers.
That sounds expensive, John.
It is.
Cashmere t-shirt.
He comes to the door and surrounded by all these people and he's like, ding dong with my doorbell that I installed.
It has a nine volt or it has like a triple A battery in the doorbell itself because I didn't want to have to pay somebody to wire it.
And ironically enough, it plays Blue Diamonds.
And they open the door, or I open the door, and I'm like, hello?
And the guy's like, hey, man, sorry to come up on you, roll up on you all crazy, but hey, I'm J.J.
Abrams.
We need you, John.
Dude, we need you right now.
This is your Navarone.
This is your Dirty Dozen.
I don't know if you're Lee Marvin or Tali Savalas.
devil in the deep blue sea, but you are needed.
John, this is a one-time opportunity.
You're the only one that can do it.
You're the only one.
I don't love the fact that you're, quote, waiting.
I think if we want to work on your messaging a little bit, how do we get to where, well, yeah, you're always open.
You're always accepting offers.
Yeah, I was doing stuff.
It's not like I was waiting for anything.
Well, you're eating a big, big bowl of affaroni as opposed to auditioning.
I was eating my affaroni.
It's leftover from us.
I was standing in the empty pool.
I was eating my offeroni in the empty pool looking up at the stars.
And then you guys show up in my driveway.
Yeah, well, High Speed Soul was playing.
Yeah, let's talk.
Let's talk.
And then he's going to say, you know what?
Because I've been listening to your show for a long time, I love you.
I got you a Filson bag full of money.
It's got $10 million in it.
You love money.
And then I say, make it 11 and we've got a deal.
Or you could say, make it nine, but throw in two RVs.
Or something.
But you've got to take that back.
You're the negotiator, not me.
You've made Sean and me cry watching you negotiate.
But here's the question.
Here's what I don't know.
How much equity?
I think equity is supposed to be real good.
That's what you're supposed to say, right?
Equity?
You don't buy the cow if you get the movie for free.
Let's walk down there and fuck all those cows.
That's right.
It's called pasturing.
And there's a whole tag for it on IMDb.
Hi, I just moved to town not too long ago.
I'm very into pasturing.