Ep. 561: "Science is Vibes"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
Hi, John.
How's it going?
Oh, good.
We're having a little bit of a snafu.
No, never.
Yeah, a little snafu.
Have you noticed that Zoom, the program, has been rolling out a lot of new features?
I noticed a change that I love.
Oh, what's the change that you love?
Is it the new Zoom office or the Zoom meeting?
Oh, man.
You don't want to get me started.
I love the interactive e-whiteboard.
Yeah, the e-whiteboard.
That's what I'm saying.
The AI e-whiteboard.
It looks like you're trying to lose money fast.
Okay.
Just that, you know, the kind of thing that bothers you.
See that big window?
It says us.
It's got our face, my face, and your name in it.
Yeah, it's good because it doesn't have that blue demon anymore.
Yeah, well, I'm not going to get into that.
It just has your little face.
My little face.
Yes, you do.
You can now make that window smaller than you used to be able to, and that's a huge benefit.
No way!
Whoa!
What a use case!
Do you realize how much of the screen that old size takes up?
Don't remember.
Not sure.
This is a greedy fucking program.
It wants to take and take and take, and all of these new functionalities...
My favorite thing right now is that the bottom button that allows you to leave the meeting actually has a little stick figure walking through an open red door.
He's out of here.
And it's the best.
It's pretty good.
Yeah.
Good.
Why doesn't every, like, leave button?
A lot of designers come up with this shit.
I won't get super into this, but it's really frustrating where it's like, okay, I'm a designer, and we're going to show you that there's something that's currently selected, and then there's things that aren't currently selected.
And they design it like you're going to see 16 things that aren't selected and one thing that is.
But that's not how it actually works in practice.
So you have an icon that's a button, and then another icon that's a button with color in it.
And you're like, okay, but you should never have to disambiguate between two items.
If you have to disambiguate between two items, you oughtn't need other items for contrast.
You know what I mean?
I think that's bad UI.
It's bad UI.
Oh, Jesus.
Why do I talk about this?
That's the thing.
That's why you need to drink cranberry juice.
You don't care about this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I saw a startup.
I got a commercial on TV.
And you know, everything now.
I mean, ever since the Remington era.
Was the commercial made by Lonely Sandwich, not to interrupt?
Probably.
He makes all those.
I don't know.
I think so.
No, but this is one of the ones where this woman goes, she seems like a Heidi Gardner character from SNL.
She's like, you guys, I used to get like six UTIs a week.
And like, what was I going to do about it?
So my husband and I created this...
this uh you know uh this company oh oh it's a startup like born from necessity direct to consumer they call it DTC down to clown yeah I get it I get it yeah you know that's the thing you don't need science you just need one person who's got a real passion for
A lot of people say you need a good idea, and I think that's old-fashioned thinking.
I think you need the right person.
I think you need a woman with blonde hair, or ash blonde, but she should also have weird highlights that really pop in HD.
I'll tell you what's confusing to me.
I'll tell you what's fucking confusing to me.
Go ahead.
No, I don't care.
I don't fucking care.
At the new college in Florida, I bet you guys were busy debunking the great man theory of history.
But now you're saying we have a great blonde woman theory of venture capital, of startup capitalism.
Is that what you're saying?
Not too fast.
Go slower.
Blonde.
I've got to be able to find this later.
Okay.
Oh, you kidding me?
I'm still doing my scholarship.
As of last night, right before I went to bed, I was still doing stuff related to my thesis from 1989.
Still.
Is that right?
Hell yeah, but, see... Have you handed it in?
That's incomplete.
Unfortunately, the faculty member who was your sponsor is dead, and the two people who we would talk to after that, well, they're also dead, so...
We don't really even have a way to look this up.
But their ghosts send it back for notes.
Everything's on Kineo form.
No, you don't care.
You don't fucking care.
No, I care.
I care.
I was, I was, God.
No, this is for a different show.
I love it when, as somebody, this is very meta.
as is the case with me often.
I'm always in a problem with those guys.
As bad as I was at the liberal arts in a conventional sense, what I came away with and eventually developed even more love and respect for, which is the whole idea of how liberal arts works and the very thing that makes it seem so useless to a lot of people, I'm still benefiting from personally and professionally.
So like one of the, calling it a thesis, it would suck.
But one of the citations I remember from, I didn't feel like going to the basement and finding it.
I was trying to find this article that I was frantically trying to find this article I read in the late 80s, right before I started my thesis called Creeping Surrealism by a guy named Joel Achenbach, who now writes for the Washington Post.
And I was trying to put it all together.
I'm in there with Chatty G. I'm in there with Google.
I'm in there with Google Books.
I'm in there with all of my dark materials where I can find things online.
And I cannot find this thing to save my goddamn life.
But it was very satisfying, though, because the whole point of this was I wanted to make a little page for my Wisdom Project site where I just mentioned a few books that were inspirational to me in the tone and approach of this.
People ask for that kind of thing.
They're like, can you name some books I should read?
Just because other people don't care doesn't mean I won't.
Yeah, sure.
But it was really neat.
So I went into Chatty G, and I was like, so I made a list.
I typed a list, and I dropped it in, and I said, give me MLA 9 citations for all of these things by order of original publication, sorry, by alpha, and then using the original publication date for all these things.
What did Chaddy G say?
Killed it.
Killed it.
I asked it for the elements of style, and what it figured out was it said 1959.
Why?
Because I think that's around the time that White joined Strunk.
It used to be Strunk and keep talking, and then you get White.
And then it gave me all my citations.
I double-checked them.
They all seemed correct, and I put it up on the internet.
It made me happy.
I still want to find the article.
I wrote to the guy a few years ago, and he never wrote me back.
See, that's how they are.
That's how they do.
You know, Strunk and White probably would have both at least had somebody write you back.
They would have had somebody in the office.
I'm looking at my Strunk and White right now.
It's across the way here.
Actually, it's funny you should say that because E.B.
White actually has, where is it?
I think it's E.B.
White was the one who said he had a, I think it was E.B.
White, had a form letter printed out with check boxes on it so that he could respond.
Won't be able to read your book.
I could be wrong.
I like that.
Who wrote that?
I should get in chatty G, but I'm just going to do this on Google like a goddamn caveman.
Yeah.
Did you ever see the card that Steve Martin gives to people?
Yes.
I want to look it up because I want to get the wording exactly right.
And the more you learn about Steve Martin, the more you appreciate Steve Martin, I feel like.
Okay, I watched I watched the did you watch the one part one's better part one's better part two's fine part one I've watched four times the the documentary with him and Martin short Sorry, I was thinking of the Steve Martin two-part special on Apple TV Well, isn't that the same thing?
No, it could be the second part of that is much heavier toward the post stand-up stuff, which is great They're really there are two different eras to completely different styles of production for the documentary and
And the first part is a backdoor, a great backdoor, like, hey, here's how to get good at art by Steve Martin.
It's just, you know what I mean?
When you're talking about it, is that about their friendship and their bits and stuff?
I love that relationship.
It's nice, but it definitely feels, Steve feels lonely, you know?
I have a lot of feelings for him.
I think he's lonesome, not lonely.
Oh, Lonesome.
Okay, he's Lonesome.
Another book that I looked up last night to go in my Inspirato file.
That's a Tenacious D reference.
My Inspirato file is called, I think it was The Modern Man's Guide to Life, which is a book I read in college.
It's just a lot of tips.
Is it like incel tips?
Like how to neg girls that you like?
I don't think that technology had matured at that point, so to speak.
Ha ha!
Oh, yeah, those guys.
You throw a drink on them.
Is your hair supposed to look like that?
Your hat's so big.
I'm hypnotized by your rings.
Your mustache almost meets in the middle.
I watched the Yacht Rock thing on HBO last night.
Man, Christopher Cross, that guy has had some serious facial hair challenges over the years.
Is that right?
He just can't get the areas to meet.
They're like archipelagos of hair.
That era of pop star, you know, before the music video, they didn't have to be cute.
There's nobody who dresses that more fucking directly than one Christopher Crisscross.
Yeah.
And he's like, after, like, there's nowhere to go but down.
After you've had, like, the unexpectedly hugest album come out of nowhere, he had told the producers, I want this to sound like Steely Dan.
And they were like, we're not going to make this sound like Steely Dan.
Yeah.
But no, the one was sailing and all that.
And then he did Arthur.
Oh, yeah.
And then his second album, he started dressing.
That was right before he got into rock and roll.
You?
Yeah.
There was that moment where there was.
But it's not far down to paradise.
There was Christopher Cross.
The options seemed to be Christopher Cross on AM radio at the time.
Christopher Cross or you could go to FM radio and listen to Pink Floyd.
And I felt like, boy, I was right in the middle.
In the morning when I was waking up, I wanted the alarm clock to be set to the Christopher Cross music.
But then at school- Oh, really?
Yeah, at school you could not- Did you enjoy that?
Did you enjoy like that or Hall & Oates, stuff like that?
Did you enjoy that?
Well, because my unsophisticated self really liked the smooth vibes, the tones.
And then rock and roll creeped in because the kids at my school were like,
teacher leave those kids alone yeah i was like oh yeah i agree i agree that kids should leave the or teachers should leave the kids alone and so yeah i got converted over to that way of thinking and also i mean cross felt like teachers were good and and were probably you know uh
needed to be more involved with the kids.
All I know, and I think this is probably Carol Bear Sager's work, when you get caught between the moon and New York City, the best that you can do is fall in love.
Yeah, that's right.
I think four people wrote that song, if memory serves.
They didn't mention this in the documentary.
By the way, documentaries, it's fine.
It's, it's, it's a, it's really, it's well done.
It's by the Bill Simmons ringer people.
And it's, it's the, the hook for it is, Hey, remember that funny yacht rock series before YouTube?
And like, they're the ones who gave it this name, yacht rock.
And it's, it's, if you just want the glossiest, easy gloss, uh,
on the world of Michael McDonald and Steely Dan and all these people, it's fine.
I would say instead... Come on, be there!
Come on, be there!
Wait, I know this.
Oh, but I didn't know he and Kenny Loggins wrote so many songs together.
I didn't know that.
Oh, yeah, you know, there used to be a world of talent, Merlin.
Remember all that cocaine and Toto?
There were fewer people in the world.
I keep coming back to that.
It's absolutely, it's empirically true.
Okay, let me close a couple threads and we'll get back to whatever you want.
Number one, Steve Martin would hand you a card that said, if you approached him in public, he would smile and hand you a card and say thank you.
It said, this certifies that you have had a personal encounter with me and that you found me warm, polite, intelligent, and funny.
I like that.
So anyways, what I would say is if you really want, if you want the uncut shit, I feel like you and I have watched this together in a room.
I don't know if we watched this particular episode, but you know the, I don't know, it's called different things, classic albums.
Oh, yeah.
I had that whole.
Yeah, you had it all on DVDs, didn't you?
I bought it all on DVD at a time when it felt like.
I downloaded every single one of them.
this is going to be this format is going to last for an eternity this format is going to make the victrola look like the sousaphone i could i could carry 15 uh greatest album uh series in one merlin in one sleeve that was
It was only as big as... John, you're a man traveling America in a white van or blue van?
Yeah, it was like a Katz's sandwich, a Katz's pastrami sandwich full of DVDs, full of the people, the guys in Queen and Fleetwood Mac,
Talking about making their classic records.
The Queen is great how they wore down the tape.
But all I was going to say was, my favorite episode of that, and some of the most essential viewing for someone our age, is the very good episode on Asia.
Oh, yeah.
By Sealy Dan, where they talk extensively to Becker and Fagan.
And it includes pretty much everything you could ever want.
Yeah, you know you done and did it.
Oh, God, Paul and I still laugh about that.
Lots of good lines.
Yeah, pretty purdy.
You got Chuck Rainey explaining how he slipped in slapping on Peg.
You slipped in slapping.
I slipped in slapping.
Whoa!
That sounds like something you'd say on an English reality show.
Yeah, you slipped in slapping.
Oh, this cheeky chappy, he slipped in slapping.
Oh, that's pretty good.
A little slap and tickle, you know what I mean?
A little Bob's your uncle.
A little back, back, back.
door stairs i'm just gonna start making up cockney rocks now with the back door stairs well that's all they're doing that's fuck it you know all words are made up but uh but they're not wrong they play so who was it jay the guy who finally did the solo on um you know the famous solo it was a long peg but they played all no on um yeah what's the famous what's the famous solo jay with my well
Yeah, it's a whole bit.
I don't want to ruin it for our listeners who want to go watch the series, because, boy, that's the hook of the whole series.
They're sitting at a desk, at a mixing board, and they're muting and soloing, so you can hear three of the other solos that people tried.
Go back and listen to that solo.
The bending that he's doing with two strings is...
Anyways, that's a very good episode.
And all the talking on Peg, Rick Morata, you learn what he's doing with his hi-hat.
I love that part.
It's all good.
And then Michael McDonald.
Peg, back to you.
Shutter falls.
You see it all.
Repeat it here.
It's your favorite foreign movie, Peg.
Yeah, I love that shit.
So anyways, that was Christopher Cross had facial hair problems.
Steve Martin doesn't like to be talked to.
I think that book, The Modern Man's Guide to Life, it was one of my books.
I'll send you my list of books.
Didn't you ever have a business card?
It seems like the type of thing.
I've had so many business cards.
But I mean a business card that said, like, you've met Merlin Mann, please leave me alone now.
No.
Man, I get such a bad rap just because I leave places.
A little early.
A little early.
A little early.
Sometimes you get there, you soak it in, and then you're like, peace out.
As my sister would say, peace out.
Does she still say that?
Well, yeah, she does.
She says, you know, but she says, I peaced out.
Oh, yeah.
I peaced out.
I peaced out sounds like some kind of a fake name.
I peaced out.
Freely is her maiden name.
Freely is her maiden name.
Freely was her maiden name.
No, but, you know, to peace out, I feel like peacing out is the right, I think that's a way of leaving.
That's a way of leaving that's different from other, it's not an Irish goodbye, it's a peace out.
Ever do check to later?
Yeah.
I have said it, but I don't feel like it's a particular action.
I don't like to do it as an overt nod to the early 80s.
Check you later.
Yeah, but I wouldn't say, oh, I check you later.
Oh, you mean to somebody in the Senate or something?
If I was talking about leaving a party, I wouldn't say, yeah, and then after I talked to the fourth person, I checked you later.
Oh, I see.
You want something that'll convert nicely to a verb.
That's right.
For that to really settle into the parlance, you would need that.
Let's not leave out Cockney rhyming slang.
I'm going to set it aside for now.
I don't want to turn it into a bit.
I never fully understood Cockney rhyming slang.
And I don't think it's meant for me to understand.
I know.
I am aware now of a few of them because I had to pick it up as a result of something else.
Oh, what did you have to pick up Cockney rhyming slang as a result of?
People's nicknames.
Who's?
Who's nickname?
Oh, you mean you're giving people nicknames?
I want to say Bernard from, you know, the singer from New Order.
I think they call him Barney.
Barney because he used to get in fights.
Although Peter Hook is the one I think who used to get in the most fights.
But Barney is a, I think a Barney is a fight between blokes.
You ever heard that one on Barney?
No, I don't think so.
Apples and Pairs is stairs, I'm pretty sure.
I see.
And I don't know, but why... That doesn't seem easier than saying... Well, that's exactly right.
You take something... Another phrase... This is one I learned from... Who's our magic guy we like?
You know, the guy we like.
Doug Henning.
I learned this from the Doug Henning documentary by David Mamet.
Ricky Jay.
In the Ricky Jay documentary, I learned so many good words.
Oh, I learned leisure domain, which is the word for magic.
Yeah, leisure domain.
I'd never... You've watched this numerous times.
Where does he get...
You can't get rid of the cards.
That's Cardini.
But Thieves Can't.
And so there's this one bit when he does his live show in London.
It's on YouTube.
You can find it.
Again, also directed by David Mamet.
Where he does this.
He was a carnival barker at one time.
And he can just see.
But Thieves Can't is cool.
Having words or what's the gay one?
Polari?
The one in the 60s?
That's really cool.
Romani.
Romani?
Yeah, that's typical.
I don't think we say that anymore.
That's its own language.
Yeah.
That's a verb.
You got Romani'd.
I wonder what... Is there any equivalent now?
Is there anybody... Is there a slang that's meant to keep other people out that's so...
Deep in a subculture.
It sure feels like it.
Yeah, but what is it?
I mean, it used to feel like tech people.
It's the obvious one that's going to make me sound old.
Okay, go ahead.
What is it, rap?
Well, my name is Merlin, and I'm rap, rap, rap.
I've been practicing saying the word rap like that for 40 years.
What is it?
In my head, all day long.
Rap music?
No, what is it?
Well, Peter Piper picked Peppers, but Run Rock Rhyme.
Humpty Dumpty fell down, that's his hard time.
Jack P. Nimble, what?
Nimble?
And he was quick, but... Yeah, sure.
You don't say dick.
So, that was funny the other day.
My kid is aware of the old guy who produced rap albums from an SNL sketch, but didn't know that was Rick Rubin.
And I was like, you're wearing a Beastie Boys t-shirt literally right now.
We should really talk more about Rick Rubin.
Rick Rubin's a whole meme.
He's a meme unto himself.
I think he's going in kind of a Ringo Starr direction.
Kind of like a peace and love and broccoli kind of thing where he's got kind of like a persona.
What was I saying about, what were we talking about?
We were talking about music and, oh, oh, oh, oh, young people.
Okay, the language.
We were talking about rhyming slang.
Well, the secret language thing.
Is there a Polari?
Well, I mean, I guess it's just that I am well and truly a full generation out of it.
on a lot of things.
And I can't help but think, I don't know if you watch SNL, but a very funny Pedro Pascal sketch on SNL where there's like an assembly at the school to tell the kids to stop making fan cams.
Now, do you know what a fan cam is?
And Cam.
See, I think your kid's not as online as mine.
My kid is not as online as yours.
Yeah, but there's just this whole language.
You got your foot on our throat, your mother, your father.
There's all... No crumbs left.
Like, that's just that one bit.
And my kid informed me at the time that Madeline and I were laughing uproariously.
Nobody says any of these anymore.
This is all just those old people.
But that's...
I guess that happens with every generation.
I just being a generation away from that makes me feel especially like kind of unhooked before we even get into the Merlin Mann stuff.
Did you know that out of pocket now means you're acting crazy?
Because my entire life out of pocket meant you're not available.
There's those kinds of changes.
My whole life, I thought out-of-pocket meant that you weren't putting it on your credit card.
Oh, you're paying out-of-pocket?
Yeah.
Like the Dutch?
Yeah, you're paying out-of-pocket.
It's not like you're charging it to your corporate account.
Oh, that works.
Yeah, okay, I'll allow it.
Isn't that what it meant?
Isn't that what it always used to mean?
No, no, no, I think that's absolutely... That's either the number one or two definition.
But acting crazy was never what out-of-pocket meant.
And before we even get to that, it's just all the ways like...
You told me this one, giving.
Yeah.
Oh, we use that a lot now.
Okay, give me that.
Can I have an example, please, of using giving?
Yeah, like that's giving, excuse me, that's giving real like nature boy stuff.
Or, you know, this is somebody said it to me.
I find it even more inscrutable.
I hear it more like, oh, that's real.
That's giving Troye Sivan.
And you're like, I'm sorry.
I just had numerous neurological events.
It's giving Troye.
And then like somebody comes in some like old man from like an Ernst Lubitsch film wanders in and goes, what did the child say to you is, you know, in the style of Troye Sivan.
But, you know, they don't use articles or prepositions anymore.
Yeah, a guy in a shop said, yeah, this is giving real Ames vibes.
Oh, it's giving Ames.
But it's actually a Broyhill.
And I was like, oh, well, yeah.
It's giving Ames.
Now that I see it, it is giving Ames.
Broyhill, the furniture maker, or Broygle, the painter?
No, no, no.
If it was giving Broygle, I'd be like, wow.
That's quite an end table.
Woo!
But the thing is, but most of that slang, you know, we had all the slang of like, that's cool.
That's, you know, like right on, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah.
But that's, and all that internet slang, it all seems to be in response to TikToks.
Like it's all, they're all versions of like either, they're all versions of either I approve of this or I disapprove of this.
There's no slang like Polari where it's like, this is the word for going downstairs to get reamed.
Yes.
Or this is what we call sailors.
That's not some Polari.
I'm still listening to you, Polari.
Whereas I feel like all Gen Z slang is just some form of like, that looks good on you or that looks shit on you.
Oh, so you say something like, you are fire.
Or that is fire.
Yeah, he's the Rizzly Bear.
I mean, whatever it is, but it's all... Are you talking about the Rizzler?
I am the Rizzler.
Are you kidding me?
You are the Kwisatz Haderach.
I'm King Rizz and the Rizzly Rizzler.
Do you know about the Costco boys, John?
I'm not sure I do.
Well...
In fact, I'm sure I don't.
In my house, you've got to know about the Rizzler.
Ask me, because I'll tell you.
Huh?
Is my response?
Yeah, it's a little boy, and he's somehow related to these two guys who go to Costco and make movies with themselves.
What?
No!
This is like... You know what I'm saying?
For me?
Wild horses couldn't drag me away.
Let's do a quick ad.
Wait, real quick.
This is in-band communication.
How much longer do we have?
oh yeah well hang on so wait a minute now we have we have a we have t-shirts available oh um what is what is it it's a it's at the culture club no it's at the cotton bureau cotton bureau okay
Five boys apparel.
That's not it.
Custom t-shirts.
No.
Cotton Bureau.
It's probably in your history, John, isn't it?
Well, but, you know, that's as hard to look for as just going in.
You're not a historian, really.
So then I go up here to where the magnifying glass is.
Okay, now I'm clicking.
Oh, Jesus Christ, John.
Okay, this is going to be a very short episode.
Go, go, go.
How long do we have?
No, no, no, it's okay.
I'm just going to send you the link.
All right.
I'm still, okay.
Okay, guys, we've got some stuff for sale on Cotton Bureau that we think is really cool with a design from the great Sean Wolf, the guy who designed the cover of When I Pretend to Fall.
And it's a really cool little patch that you can buy.
Oh, is it out of stock?
Oh, it might be out of stock.
No, come on.
Really?
I mean, I ordered it.
It's completely sold out.
How?
How can it be sold out?
I just cleared all filters.
What you sent me was a thing that I can't look at.
I can't see.
Oh.
Why can't I see?
Of course you can.
CottonBureau.com.
God damn it.
I wish you'd wake me for these meetings.
CottonBureau.com slash people slash Roderick dash on dash the dash line.
But in these...
Unless, look at the show notes on your podcast player of choice, and you'll see a link in there with a little patch.
And you can click on that, and that'll take you to the page.
You won't have to type with your fingers.
So it's a great design.
It's very cool.
You can get a hoodie.
You can get a work shirt so you can act like you have a job, a T-shirt, a hat.
Or had a job.
I'm really glad I went ahead and ordered the patch before it sold out.
I ordered three.
Yeah, they're cool back and then you get up the pocket patch shirt has an actual patch on it.
Is that right?
No, no It's on the work shirt the pocket patch on the work shirt, but I think I think also the sweatshirt has an actual patch on it and one of those actual hat has a patch that has a patch
And then, yeah, so, but we got to get this episode out because some of these things are going to be sold out in a matter of minutes.
Yeah, here's the thing.
I'll get this out quick as I can.
Hello, it's 1134 a.m.
on December 2nd.
Hello, how are you?
Hi there.
Touch one.
And so, yeah, you'll have about six hours after this comes out.
So you go to that URL and...
But there are T-shirts that are on demand that will be available for longer.
It's just the hat and the work shirt and the hoodie are ending soon.
Got it.
But the T-shirts are on demand, and they're also very, very cool.
They have the patch.
I understand that at least one of these items, the chapeau, I believe has been worn by the singer of Presidents of the USA, Chris Ballew.
Yes.
So I still owe two emails.
I fucked up again.
I had Thanksgiving last week.
I had to go play with the babies and the dogs.
I've been hearing from people that they ordered it after we mentioned it on the last show, and it's already arrived.
They're already wearing their gear.
Yeah, they've got their gear.
Somebody wrote me and said, the patch is already sewed on my Levi's jacket.
I bet every order is constrained by the longest-taking item.
So whatever my longest-taking item may have a shorter-taking item.
That's a term I just made up.
Yeah, it gives time.
That's a little bit of our Polari.
It's the longest-taking item.
Yeah, you go downstairs.
All of our Polaris set to, like, club music of the 80s.
Yeah, ready for this?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or, yeah.
Okay, and then Steve Martin, Roderick on the line.
So you go to that address, and you can go and order that if you feel like it.
Order it quick, though, because...
We don't have any control over this.
Like this is when it ends.
So we can do it again, I guess.
I don't really, I haven't kept up with it.
But if you like to get a shirt or something, you know, and you want to support the show, they're priced the way they're priced because these things cost a lot.
And we also need to make money from this when we sell this.
So, I mean, I think they're fairly priced relative to, you know, we did a show the other day.
Don't ask me what my kids My Chemical Romance ticket cost.
We did.
I don't want to know.
We did a show.
You have no idea how much you don't want to know.
No, I have an idea.
I spent 18 hours just staring blankly ahead going, what has happened?
We're going to see Billie Eilish on whatever, Thursday.
Yeah.
And in order to get three Billie Eilish tickets, I had to... So I called around, and everybody was like, go screw yourself.
And I went to my friend at Live Nation, and I said, look, I don't want to be told to go screw myself again.
You're so connected with these companies now.
And my friend at Live Nation said, okay, give me your name, and I'm going to put it in the Live Nation hopper, and at some point, you will get an email from somebody...
And respond to that email within 24 hours in the affirmative, and then you will one day get three tickets and you don't have any say where they are.
Oh, right.
This is the lottery thing you talked about, right?
And I was like, okay, I guess.
So they arrived, not cheap, but at least not like open market.
Yeah.
And, yeah, so now we're going on Thursday.
But this show that I did on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving— Do you think we should go ahead and just close up just a bit where we do the— Oh, yeah, where we say go to CottonBureau.com slash people slash Roderick dash on dash the dash line.
Yes.
And get these shirts immediately.
And that baseball hat is really cool, too.
Yeah.
Thank you very much.
And thanks to everybody who's already bought stuff.
Yeah.
We appreciate your support of the program.
Cheers to you.
But anyway, the night before the rock concert, I was sitting here about one o'clock in the morning.
And, you know, there's a lot of things you think about for a rock concert.
You're like, oh, I got to have this distortion box and I got to step on it at this point in the song and all the guitars have to be in tune.
Oh, you know, they're so tedious.
Your brain's doing kind of like a run through and looking for snags.
And I thought...
Hey, wait a minute.
I should be selling merch.
Merchandise.
Merch.
Merch.
And I said, but I don't have any merch.
Well, you don't have any new merch.
You have your old clothes and books.
That's right.
Well, except that that voice in my head was like, but you have all that unsold merch from 2006 down in your bomb shelter.
And I said, I do.
And the other voice said, you sure do.
You step over it every time you're in there looking for something else.
And I go, whoa.
So I went down there one o'clock in the morning and I found all these bins of old, like.
like national tour hand screen printed on heavy uh long winners items all long winners oh that's great okay posters from shows posters designed by sean wolf from the time the decemberists opened for us back in 2003 or four or whatever and so i stacked all this stuff up and i and i took it down to the venue and
And I put it up on the wall and I said, I don't know what any of this is worth.
Is that poster worth $100?
Is it worth $10?
And so I started asking people at the venue, how much does this stuff sell?
And they said, oh, bands come through here and they sell shirts anywhere from $25 to $60.
Yeah.
And I said, well, that's not helpful.
And then the next person I talked to said, I would price those.
I'd sell those for $10.
You're frustrated because the venue owners didn't make a business decision on your behalf.
Well, yeah, because what I'm looking for is what is the standard?
You know what kind of band the Longwinners are.
You know where we fit.
Think about it in terms of like the cost of gas, right?
We're like, I don't know, it was like 350 or whatever now.
I don't have a car.
But like you got gas and it's out there and sometimes it's more expensive in other places, right?
Or like, I don't know how much to tip in this situation.
All you're really trying to say is like, what's normal here?
What's normal?
That's right.
And if my chemical romance was playing...
a 700 capacity venue and they sold their t-shirts for 150 i would go fine but if a band that's just starting out is playing this same venue and there's 80 people in there are they going to charge 40 for a shirt probably i can just in the case of being very very very low wrong like we were
I mean, we were dubbing, a lot of cases, when I made my own cassettes for my music, you know, solo, if you like, like, and also for Baker, we were making a lot, we were duping, like dubbing our own cassettes.
So we were not, we were, but like, I guess I'm trying to say in the same way that you don't feel like it's a loss to send a demo to like Atlantic Records, you know what I mean?
We were happy that people were buying it at all.
Right.
That's pretty different from like, you know, in the case of the last, the previous, this latest generation of traveling, merch is the only place people are making any money.
I think it's true for me, puppets.
I think it's true.
Just a lot of people like you just, you're not going to make that much money selling vinyl, but at least when you tour, you sell shirts.
But let me ask you, let me ask you this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If there's only five mediums of the shirt that has the wiener dog on it, which somebody patiently explained to me was not a wiener dog, but was in fact some kind of low other dog.
There's only five left, and the last time these were for sale was 2005.
What's that shirt worth?
This sounds like a word problem.
I'm looking for the trick.
Yeah, that's right.
Like, if that shirt and a taxi driver meet in the distance.
Does that increase the value in a way I should be aware of?
And also, let's be honest, like, who buys mediums?
Like, very small men and women.
And I mean, these are like, once they're gone, they're gone.
So the first person that walks up might be like, I only have $15, but the next person that walks up might be like, I would pay a thousand dollars for that.
Sure.
Now, who do you want to sell it to?
Right.
You don't want to sell it to, you know, you don't want to be like, oh, sure.
15 bucks.
This thing is old because you know, a Ferrari 350 is old, but it's not worth less because it's old.
Really?
Like right now, right now at this very moment, at this very moment, Merlin, I am watching.
I'm not doing it actively.
I'm not watching it because I'm listening to you with my full attention.
I appreciate that.
But I have a page up of a green 1968 Fiat 124 Spider that is being auctioned right this moment.
And it has an hour and 24 minutes left to go.
That's even less time than to get our shirts.
I know.
Is that a sports car, John?
It's a sports car, and it was my first car.
I had a Fiat Spyder.
It was the first car I ever owned.
What does that stand for?
Fix it again, Tony.
Fix it again, Tony.
That's what people said to me then.
It's not a good car for Alaska.
You know what I never liked is fixed or repaired daily.
That's just so lame.
Yeah.
Isn't that weak?
I think fix it again, Tony, is funny.
Yeah, fix it.
And the thing is, all the auto mechanics, when you ask them, what's the worst car?
They all say Jeep.
I'm not talking about Fords.
Shit, really?
Old Jeeps are worse?
Well, no, old Jeeps, I think, are different.
They're talking about new Jeeps.
But anyway, there's no... So you've got to decide.
You had given some thought before.
Now you've got to go there.
You've got to write something down.
And are you going to be there the whole time?
Is somebody there for you?
It seems like you would need to abstract the pricing process a little bit.
Are we talking about the Fiat, or are we talking about the T-shirts again, or the posters?
Geez, I'm sorry.
So you're buying a car?
No, no, it's okay.
so anyway you're contacting live nation you're going to see billy eilish you own five beds and apparently now you're going to get a green car i'm sorry i didn't mean to cut you off i apologize there was a gal who came to sell the shirts and i said to her listen you're the professional here you sell these you are a merch person by trade what do you think i should sell these for
And she said, I love all your podcasts.
And I said, I know.
That's not really the question.
I know.
A lot of people do.
You'll meet a lot of fellow travelers here at the show tonight.
A lot of people do.
But listen to me when I say this.
I have to go tune my guitars right now.
But I'm weirdly stressed about what the right price of all these things should be.
And she said, oh, well, you know, you could sell them between $15 and $50.
I said, you are making it more confusing for me.
And she said, well, whatever you want.
The last thing I ever want to hear.
Other people are really bad at making your difficult decisions.
I know.
Whatever you want.
When somebody says that to me, part of me dies inside.
Whatever I want, I don't want anything.
I just want to be eating spaghetti in the bathtub.
I don't want to be here doing this.
I don't want to sell old posters.
This isn't what I was put on the planet to do.
And she said, that's a shame because I am a fifth generation merch seller.
I know.
This has been my family's trade since we left Bulgaria.
But you know what I had to sell?
I had some Game Changers posters featuring Merlin Mann, Scott Simpson, and some other hee-haws.
Some other hee-haws that don't talk to me anymore.
That was a pretty cool poster.
Was it like a little bit Saul Bass?
No, no, no, no.
It was like the tinted black and white drawings or something.
It was a cool poster, though.
We signed those.
We signed those in the lobby.
We did.
It was designed by Aaron Huffman, the late great bass player of Harvey Danger.
He designed those posters.
We did sign them.
And if you recall, I was being a dick to everybody backstage because I was mad about how the show had gone.
And I was like, we have to go sign the posters.
You're also a little steamed about how things are going with one of your collaborators.
Yeah, that's right.
He interrupted us.
Not only can you still find us being interviewed by Shingy, but I think you can find the thing where your panel on disrupting industry with five idiots was slightly disrupted by somebody who wanted to do their own little show.
Yeah, they did.
At that point in time, that person was doing their own little show.
Trying some things out.
Trying some things out.
We were all sitting up there like, hey, there's a lot of other people here on the stage, too.
Anyway.
We didn't have these problems before John Hodgman grew a mustache.
That's all I'm saying.
You know, that's the thing.
It was the mustache.
And then I gave him a pair of Ray-Bans.
The Ray-Bans.
He really gravitates toward a certain kind of Unabomber thing.
But it just looks like John Hodgman dressed as the Unabomber.
But these posters from our show back in 2011 or whatever, they were flying off the shelves.
People wanted me to autograph them.
And so what I did was I drew a little thought bubble above your head, and then I signed in the thought bubble as if you were thinking of me.
What did I say?
What did I say aloud about it?
You said John Roderick.
Oh.
That was all you said.
Do I say that a lot?
Is that one of my catchphrases?
Yeah, because there were people coming up.
They wanted me to sign the poster, and I was like, I'm not just going to sign it.
I'm going to sign it as though Merlin is thinking of my signature in a thought bubble.
Oh, you put your impression, your mark.
You put your mark in a thought bubble.
I spoke your signature?
You did.
Well, you thought it to yourself.
My voice is my passport.
That's right, and that's what you chose to think that day, and people are going to hang that on their wall.
I mean, it's not like a thousand of them.
The parents' wall, yeah.
Yeah.
Their parents' wall, the wall of their rec room, their parents' rec room.
Mom, I'm on Zoom right now!
Mom, I posted it again!
Mom!
You flippin' whore!
I told you it's H-O scale!
H-O scale!
Remember, because you're a hoe!
Yeah, is your hair supposed to look like that?
My new character, which I'm slightly stealing from Chris Fleming, it's gonna be...
An abusive basement dweller.
This is my son.
His name is Morlock, and I love him.
Oh, Morlock.
Oh, yes, he does.
He's so sweet.
And so you're telling me you had your three medium wieners.
You had some posters.
I did.
And I sold them.
I sold them.
They flew off the shelf like hotcakes.
Was that it?
Did you have like seven individual items?
You were like, big box?
How much stuff did you bring?
I probably sold six different poster designs and six different t-shirt designs.
No, that's what I'm talking about.
Yeah, all from long ago times.
And people really liked them.
And it's kind of like the Roderick on the Line patch that you can no longer get.
Although, well, are we going to make more of them?
I don't know.
Maybe.
I used to be involved in this process.
But, you know, the thing is, it's like NFC apes.
You're minting something that's deliberately scarce and unwanted.
Yeah, right.
Well, I don't know about unwanted.
John, are they on yachts?
Are the apes on yachts?
I'm confused.
You know, if you tape a banana to a wall, is it worth $60 million?
Well, I mean, it depends on how it could be the banana of Theseus.
It's the concept of a banana taped to a wall that we're buying.
Oh, no, you're doing that.
Okay, yeah.
It's the concept of an ape on a yacht that I'm buying, and no one else can have my ape, and you can't have my ape.
You can't even see my ape.
Hey, you want to hear me describe NFTs in a way that reflects my absolute lack of knowledge about what they actually are?
Would you like to hear it?
Yeah, okay, go.
Real quick.
NFT?
Yeah, you're buying a receipt for a receipt.
Enjoy.
A receipt for a receipt?
God, that's a Merlin thing.
Isn't that good?
I don't even care if it's true.
It's so fucking good.
It's like going to CVS and getting an even longer second receipt.
Am I right?
You know what?
That really harkens back to good old Merlin of the old days.
Oh, back when I was... You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Back when I was more... When you were Merlin Mann.
Yeah.
I saw the great Stuart Lee, one of my favorite comedians.
He's a great comedian.
Have I already tried to turn you on to him?
Yeah, you've sent me all the Stuart Lee and I've watched it all.
Did you watch the one with the taxi cab?
I did.
I loved it.
Yeah.
Because you know what the problem is now, these days?
What's the problem?
These days.
What is the problem these days?
What's the problem these days?
These days.
Yeah.
You get arrested and thrown in jail just for saying your English.
Just for saying your English.
There's one point, though, in one of his bits in that series, in Stuart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, where he does a funny thing.
And you really have to know the whole history of Stuart Lee to fully appreciate it, but he's the smartest comedian working today.
Full stop.
And at one point, he turns to the camera, the side camera on stage, and he goes... He likes to do that.
That's one of them.
He does.
You don't like that, though, right?
Doesn't that annoy you?
No, I love it because of the way he does it.
He's so good at it.
He turns and he goes, you see?
You see?
I know how to tell jokes.
I just choose not to.
That's how I feel a lot of the time.
I could say things to make dumber people laugh, but I would rather push the envelope.
Or as you say envelope.
I know.
I know.
You do want to push the envelope envelope.
I do.
Do we have two different accents?
Do you say envelope and I say envelope?
The longer I'm acquainted with...
Syracuse.
Well, remember I said to you, I think people can develop, I'm calling it a transverse, or maybe I should call it an intransitive accent, where you start hearing things wrong and you think people have an accent.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like the calls coming from inside the language.
You're hearing it wrong and you think it's an accent.
I say measure in a very normal way, and Syracuse thinks it's silly because he's from Long Island and doesn't know how to say things.
He says Mario.
He says Mario.
Mario, right.
There's no other person.
They're closer to Italy there than we are.
That's true.
It is a very Long Island.
Yeah.
But does he say measure?
Yeah.
No, the one he always hits me with is Mary Mary Mary so like M-A-R-Y M-E-R-R-Y M-A-R-R-Y Why are we talking about this?
Mary Mary Mary Mary I pronounce I hear they're all exactly the same to me I know they can be pronounced differently but I say Mary Mary and Mary Merry Christmas Mary
And what's the third Mary?
Oh, you got it.
I married Mary, and it was a Mary occasion.
I was very Mary when I married Mary.
Yeah, how are they different?
How could they possibly be said differently?
They're pronounced exactly the same.
Yeah, in any version of the language.
And people who go, like, you pronounce Mary Christmas wrong.
If you went to Tonga and said that, they would say it the same way, too.
Tonga.
Yeah, in Tonga.
We don't say Merry Christmas anymore.
I feel like that's awesome, and so you made a little bit of money, and also, let's be honest, you cleaned out some boxes.
Cleaned out some boxes, which is number one goal.
How was the show?
Can't...
oh it was great i mean it was great in the sense that i got up on stage and immediately forgot how to play the guitar yeah and of that's what you've been worrying about when uh before like it is the button the button was a cypher like knowing to hit the rap pedal at the right time or your you know your signal chain i got a new i got a new um signal chain i got a new mini controller i'm super excited about
Like, there's all kinds of things to get worried about, but ultimately, I think those are all nice to haves, but the need to have is, oh, no, I think I don't know how to play guitar anymore.
That's a panicky feeling, John.
I launched into the first song, and I immediately realized that I had never seen a guitar neck before, and I didn't remember any of the places on it.
And you started doing that thing you do with your left hand to show how bad you are, where you made gooey gelatin fingers to go like, I don't know how to make these notes.
I did, but it was only masking the fact that I really didn't know how to make them.
And all the guys on stage are like, you played that perfectly in practice.
And I'm like, I know.
And then throughout the show of the 15 songs, I think I played 13 of them wrong.
Were you behind, wrong order, wrong chord, or just totally spaced out?
I don't even know where to begin on this neck.
Yeah, just rubber fingers, and I look down at the neck, and I'm like, I don't know, was this ever in a scale?
I mean, the thing about chords is it's not just the chords, Merlin.
It's the order...
That the chords appear.
It's called the quarter.
It's, well, it's, yeah, the quarter, as Syracuse would say.
Wait, did I say it wrong?
I was trying to make a pun on order and chord, and I said quarter.
No, I liked it.
I liked it.
But quarter also, it has another musical sound.
Oh, I pronounced it wrong, like a quarter note.
A quarter.
Well, it depends on how you measure it.
How you measure, measure.
How'd your mom say measure?
Oh, boy.
We'll have to ask her.
How do you say measure, Mom?
She's from a different part.
She is.
That's a very Cincinnati way to pronounce something.
Measure?
But that's how I pronounce it.
What about Warsh?
Does she say Warsh?
She doesn't, and she would be extremely mad if someone suggested she did.
Please don't tell her.
I'm sure 100% for a fact that her grandmother said Warsh.
They're simple people.
But it was part of my mom leaving Van Wert and becoming a sophisticated Columbusian.
uh when she went to columbus and people were like warsh and she said no no no i'll never say it that way again and i don't think she ever did and my dad used to tease her you say warsh and she would say i divorce you that's pretty much how it went that's why they got divorced because he said you say things i feel like she's been laying the groundwork for a while like you know back off it does feel like that yeah yeah yeah but no i don't that's the thing about people in the pacific northwest we pronounce english perfectly
okay and all other people have some kind of no kidding is that something you learned at uw like when did you first pick that up were you aware of that in alaska that like really even though like i don't live anywhere near washington anymore like yeah i mean these people are the only people who pronounce anything right well actually alaska well the problem with alaska is there are too many norwegians up there a lot of problems yeah but the but no that what happens is here's the thing okay if you have if you have a distillery
if you have a still and you're making moonshine yeah you come a drinker yeah do you drink the moonshine when it's halfway cooked oh um do you go up the pipe and try and get the moonshine out back when it's like some kind of stinky mash okay no i think not yeah you wait for it to be distilled all the way through the still and it comes out and it's pure
Oh, it's not done until it's done.
And that's what happened with English.
It started back in Yieldy, England.
Okay.
And then it went to New York.
New York.
Yeah.
And then it went to Texas.
Texas.
And then it went to all these fucking places.
New York City.
And then it was in, you know, when the Wujins got on it.
Maryland?
Maryland.
Yeah, and then it got to Oregon and the Oregonians.
We're so bad.
We're the opposite of Fred Armisen.
We can do no regional accents.
And then it got to Washington.
And it's not Washington.
I call it Washington.
You don't do it.
I'm sorry.
You don't do it.
See, that makes you sensitive to that, I think.
We are at the end of the world, first of all.
We're at the edge of the universe.
And right after us, you fall into the Pacific.
And then on the other side, you speak Japanese.
And so English got to its perfect point right as it got here to Seattle and then it dropped into the sea.
I'll be darned.
There's no other way of looking at it.
You're saying it was kind of a, not in a negative way, but a terminus for the language.
It stopped there.
That's right.
That's right.
And the thing about, you know, here's the thing about millennials, right?
A lot of the times they think they're speaking science, but it's really vibes.
They're just talking vibes, but they call it science.
And that's also true of my language science.
It's just vibes.
I don't have time to write this down and listen.
These are all very interesting.
The thing is, vibes is science now, and science is vibes.
Because you can make science say anything you want anymore.
And you can call it science up and down, but it's really just vibes.
You can call it science.
You can call it science.
Everybody does.
These days, you get arrested.
Yeah, you got two people that disagree with each other completely, and they both think they're saying science to each other, and it's just vibes.
It's just vibes.
Yeah, I did not invent this, I'm sure, but a phrase I use, science spray.
You just spray a little science on it.
Oh, science spray.
The thing is, real scientists are moonwalking back out of the conversation.
They're up in their tower, and they're moving beads around, and they're like...
They're like, listen, we don't support anybody anymore.
We're just trying to prove whether this mechanical owl can talk to Apollo or whatever scientists do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And everybody else is just spraying science on each other, which is viable.
In the end, we should not have made the owl's wings out of wax.
And we hear some phrases from Polari.
Yeah, let's hear them.
These are, according to this article anyway, this is some terms that come from Polari that we still use.
Oh, we still use.
Well, drag means clothing.
Drag.
Camp.
Good.
Means funnier flamboyant.
A big one I've heard, Bona.
I remember Bona as in Italian.
Bona being good.
Where's some other ones?
There's other ones.
But, you know, I first heard Polari, I think, in The Boys in the Band, that movie from the early 70s.
Very colorful.
Oh, I don't know if I ever saw it.
And you know, like the thing where you call your friend Mary or whatever and all that business?
Oh, yeah.
Those were sweet times.
Those were quaint times.
Back when we concealed ourselves from others.
You know, seeing that movie is Rene Aubergino.
C-Pap, C-Pap.
I've really gone from Louis Armstrong to Tom Waits, and I think there's no turning back.
He played the advisor on that TV show, Benson.
You went from Louis Armstrong through David Lee Roth to Tom Waits.
Wait a minute.
Does it go the other way?
Have you seen Junior's grades?
It came on the radio.
We were flipping between KOIT, which is all Christmas music, and KEXP.
They were playing some Jimi Hendrix.
I got a little mad because they were referring to acts as bold as love, but then they played Are You Experienced?
So I flipped away.
Oh, come on.
Come on.
I went to 107.7 The Bone.
Yeah, The Bone.
I'm the only one in the car that ever always listened to me.
The Boneyard Classic.
And of course... And I was like, God damn it, this is such a great time.
What is that, Women and Children First?
Or... It's not Diver Down and it's not One or Two.
When the cradle will rise!
I think it's the green cover, right?
It's like Women and Children First or... Anyway.
Have you seen Junior's grades?
Why I sound like a horror guy?
I don't sound like David Lee Roth.
Okay, let me get my David... One... One break!
Come on!
Brady's Bits, Ted Templeman is... Ted Templeman!
Which I never knew was a Jerry Lewis name.
Ted Templeman didn't look at all like how I expected.
He's in the Yacht Rock documentary.
Ted Templeman?
Ted Templeman.
Now, would you be surprised to know that he, I always figured he looked like, what did I think?
I thought Ted Templeman would look a little bit, I don't know, like Ted Nugent or something.
He looks more like Rick Wakeman.
He's got like long blonde hair.
Didn't have a cape.
That's how they used to do before MTV.
God, it was a different time.
You could be whatever you wanted.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, you know.
Everybody wants some.
I had that in my head when I was walking across Europe.
I had everybody wants some in my head.
And I used to sing it to myself as I'd be walking along like, everybody wants some.
Oh, my God.
I went to the edge and our students looked down.
I lost a lot of friends there, baby.
You can probably find, well, you can probably find He Said Not Knowing.
They did a show in Oakland in 1981.
I think it was the 81 Invasion Tour.
And there's, I think, only two of the songs are on YouTube.
But one of them is Unchained.
And it's really good.
Yeah.
You know, a lot of people used to be good.
Do you know what I mean?
Oh my God.
Those first four albums, I mean, I like that every down, but those first four albums, like they're fully half of each one of those albums is very good.
Yeah.
I mean, Van Halen too.
It's kind of like the Pretenders too.
The first record was perfect.
King's cover is Van Halen too, right?
Yeah.
Beautiful.
girls yeah they probably had that sophomore slump type situation you know that's what happens you got your whole life to do your first record and then you only have uh six months to do where did you hear that from because i'll tell you where i heard it from where did i hear it from i'm not sure maybe billy corgan chairman buck
He was quoting, I remember two Peter Buck quotes that stick with me.
One of them was he would quote Sky Saxon from The Seeds and something like, you know, any song that takes more than 20 minutes to write isn't worth doing.
And the other one was that you, yeah, I wonder who originally said that.
I'll ask Chatty G. You got your entire life, because I've heard this about all kinds of, I remember at the time Reckoning came out.
People were like, wow, you know, this is pretty good for a second album.
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
It's my favorite.
It's my favorite of their albums.
But at the time, because you're like, Sophomore Slump, you've got your entire life to write and record your first album and six months to write your second.
I think about that all the time.
A lot of people think that the second Long Winners record is the best one.
It's, well, I mean.
And I only had a little bit of time to write and record it.
Yeah.
Next one's going to be amazing.
If it takes more than a half an hour to write, come on.
I've got a new MIDI controller that's giving me a great deal of power.
It's in your signal chain.
Yeah, I'm sampling.
Is it entirely your signal chain?
Does your signal go in one side and come out the other?
I mean, it's really nice because of the knobs and stuff.
But all the stuff's happening on the computer.
You don't even need to have it plugged in to go listen to sounds and tap away on your computer keyboard just to hear what it sounds like.
Well, maybe you don't.
Boy, it's expensive, though.
You get into that stuff with software instruments.
All I wanted was a Mini Moog.
All I really wanted was to be able to make the sound of Gary Newman on our Friends Electric by Tubeway Army.
And I knew I needed a Mini Moog.
But that's like $200 if you want an editable Mini Moog.
A $200?
Oh, you're talking about the app.
You know, a real Minimoge is like $1,800, or at least it used to be.
It's probably $2,500 now.
Yeah, I'll bet.
You know, when I go downstairs and play, I'm using all 1975 technology.
And I sometimes feel like it's really attractive, but it's also like, is this good though?
Because I keep forgetting how to, I mean, my fingers turn to rubber bands.
QED.
We've seen this already.
I actually had to lean down.
You know, Chris, the junior high school teacher that comes to all the long winter shows and always has.
And he's on the internet too.
Hi, Chris.
At one point I lost my, all the lyrics went out of my head.
Yeah.
And I stood there and I was like... What's wrong with you?
I was like rubber fingers.
Hang on.
Were you just having a weird night?
No, it always happens.
If you look on the internet, there are so many pictures.
Sounds like you might have chosen the wrong career, John.
So many videos of me.
You chose so many wrong careers.
Halfway through the song and looking down at the crowd and going, what comes next?
And usually, like, longtime fans know that this is going to happen.
And so they're ready to shout the lyrics back at me.
And it always works.
I'm always like, yeah.
I mean, one time in Portland, I couldn't hear them.
And I was like, what?
What?
I feel like this has got to be impossible, but just because of the nature of the song and the weird vamping in it, because sometimes you do a weird vamp in... Oh, shit.
Oh, fuck.
Pretend to fall.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Departure.
Departure is one where you sometimes, it's not on pretend to fall, but Departure, you sometimes do like a funny, because you know that, I don't know if you know this, but your chords on that song are kind of unconventional time-wise.
They're very, not even just syncopated.
But then when you play it live, you play up that almost dissonance a lot more.
And there's vamping.
There's various vampings, I feel like.
There's some vamps.
Yeah, there's some vamps.
So, you know, a lot of the stories that I tell in the songs are a little bit impressionistic or surrealistic.
And so it's so if I start to drift away, if I start to think about something else while I'm on stage, I might lose my place in where in the vision.
I'm leaving you all my can chili.
And so I have to rubber mouth.
Well, I couldn't think of what, and so the band is playing along and they're like, you know, this is kind of a new band.
And the old band knew when this happened.
Is this the Nordstrom guy in this band?
No, no, no.
This is just a, this is a much better band.
Oh boy.
But, uh, oh no, no, not to, not to say that he isn't great.
He is, but this band is like.
No, no, you're saying this is like LA.
If I understand you correctly, you're saying this is like LA in the late seventies.
We're like, you just had your pick.
You got your pick of anybody.
You know what I'm saying?
That's right.
And if this happens in practice, if I'm like, I don't remember the lyrics, they just like smirk or whatever, but they're not used to, they're not prepared for it to happen on stage.
And so they have that look on their face.
Like, are we supposed to keep playing the song?
Like when we get to the chorus, we go to the chorus, or are we supposed to stay on the verse until you come back in?
Yeah.
and i was like so i had to look at them and kind of go do the finger twist in the air like just keep going but don't change just stay here while i figure out what to do next and they were and they were like okay kind of had that look on their face collectively as a band like okay
And then I got down on one knee and I leaned over at off the edge of the stage.
Cause I saw Chris there and I was like, what is the next line?
And he had to think about it.
And then he knew it and he, he, he yelled it at me.
And then I was like, right.
And I don't know how much of the crowd.
knew what was going on because usually the singer doesn't and the second verse like get down on his knees and talk to somebody in the crowd right um but you never know right what would david lee roth do in that situation he'd do some high he'd do a high kick or michael anthony would remind him uh anyway that i think
is an example of how every bit of yourself can turn into a rubber band if you're not thinking about it.
When was the last time some part of you turned into a rubber band?
Oh, man.
Here's the thing, though.
You don't get to pick what kind of rubber band you're going to be because there are parts of me that can rubber band successfully and other parts of me that don't know the rubber band was rotten until I tried to pull on it.
Oh, that's the worst.
I did it yesterday.
I found a really good rubber band yesterday, but it had gotten a fault.
And I had to let it go.
Oh, it had gotten a fault.
And then when you tried to rubber band it, it went.
Tuck.
Yeah.
It said.
So now it's a rubber string, and that goes in a different drawer.
Did it hand you down your walking cane and hand you down your hat?
I can do this.
Is it guaranteed to blow your mind?
Yeah.
Penny Lane?
Immigrants?
Oh, Wing Chun, Wing Chun?
Hand me down my walking cane.
No, you're right.
That's how it goes.
But that's not it.
It's Rubber Band Man.
Rubber Band Man.
According to Questlove, Mike McDonald, Michael McDonald, I call him Mike, Michael McDonald, not Yamo B there, but he was doing his other giant hit, was on Soul Train.
He's like, yeah, that's the all-access pass to black culture.
He's like, yeah, but you'd be walking around, people would just say, Questlove, and then this guy, I think his name's Thundercat.
He's like a bass guy.
He did a song...
He was interviewed at one point and said, somebody said, like, who would you most like to... He's a black man.
And he's interviewed a very interesting, very interesting musician.
And he's interviewed at one point, and they're like, who would you most want to collaborate with at this point in your career?
He's like, no question, I'd like to write a song with Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins.
And he did, and they performed it, and it is...
Oh, it's right in the pocket.
It's right in the pocket for like minute by minute, you know, or like maybe slightly later.
You know, those were all, I mean, Merlin, people aren't as good as they used to be.
No, God, they're so not as good as they used to be.
Yeah, people used to be good.
They have so much more.
It's like, you know, the food's terrible and the portions are huge.
Go buy a shirt.
You only have three hours.
Go buy a shirt.
You only have three hours.
Wasn't that smooth, the way we did that?
Yeah, that was really smooth.
You're smooth.
You're a good broadcaster.
John, if you remember the lyrics to your songs, I think you'd be a good musician.
Yeah.
It was a cinnamon.
Huh?
Okay.
All right.
I'm stopping the recording.