Ep. 587: "High-Hatting"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Gosh, I'm five minutes late.
Yeah.
Ugh.
Yeah.
Oy.
You keep me on my toes.
I was sitting here.
I was sitting here in a chair.
My mom walks in and she said,
don't you have Merlin today?
Don't you have Merlin today?
And I said, that's what she says.
Do you have Merlin today?
And I said, I have Merlin every day.
And she said, she said, don't you have Merlin today?
And I was like, no, it's Sunday.
And she said, John, really?
And she looked at her watch.
And I was like, oh, oh no.
And I said, what time is it?
And she said, 1102.
And I said, ah!
But also I said, it's not too late.
I can do this.
You can still save this.
Merlin doesn't even know.
He doesn't even know that I thought it was Sunday.
No, no, no.
I had no way of knowing.
Yeah.
So then here I am, right?
What if it is Sunday?
I don't think it is.
I don't think it is.
See, I get into arguments with people.
Like my friend John Syracuse about how you can prove whether things are absolutely true.
Yeah.
And I get into arguments with people like, I don't even know what to believe.
You know, it's like Milo says, you know, and, you know, I don't even know what side to look at anymore.
You know, what's that book I like?
What's that called?
The Phantom Tollbooth?
Is that the book I like?
Yeah, The Phantom Tollbooth.
That's a good ass book.
It's a good book.
Um, but no, I'm really glad that you're here.
Um, so since you've been up, however long that's been your internal barometer or calendar tells you it feels like a Sunday.
Cause I have very strong feelings about days too.
I just, these are, those are two days I would rarely mix up.
Well, you know, one of the crazy things is that yesterday, see, Ariel is out of town.
And so our daughter and I have been just, we've spent the last four or five days just kicking it around.
You know, it's summertime.
She's got her swim club.
But other than that, just kind of kicking it around.
And yesterday I said, I said, what do you want to do?
And she said, let's go to the beach.
But the beach can mean a lot of things here in Seattle.
It can mean you go down to the... I mean, there's a beach like a mile from where I am.
But if you say... Is a beach technically anywhere where water and land meet?
This is what... Or is that more like a shoreline?
This is the big question.
It's a big question, yeah.
A lot of people in Seattle, if I say...
If I point to the salt water that's right here in front of me and I call it the ocean, people are mad because it's not the ocean, they say.
And I say, it's salt water.
It touches the ocean.
It's the ocean.
And they say, it's not the ocean.
It's the sound.
It's the sea, but it's not the ocean.
I learned about these things two days ago.
Oh, you did?
Yeah.
Oh, well, you're going to have smart things to say.
I watched a really good video about floating bridges.
And how one of the OGs and then several subsequent Gs are there, like some of the most permanent-ish, permanent floating bridges are in your area.
I know you know this, but it says you got the ocean and then that's Puget Sound and then Puget Sound, you get bridges and then that goes over to Lake Washington and that's freshwater.
Is that right?
That's correct.
I watched a video, so I'm not trying to sell myself as any expert.
There is a floating bridge over salt water, too.
Hood Canal Bridge.
There's another one named after the guy who invented the floating bridge.
That's right.
Hal Hartley, I think, is named.
That's the I-90 bridge is named after the guy.
Hal Hartley, right?
yeah the i-90 bridge though has it's two bridges it's funny because if the guy who directed metropolis had a bridge named after him it would be funny they they uh they named the second bridge after him uh but nobody remembers to call it that they just they've done all kinds of clever things though with um uh you i'm just telling you things you know but um i'm mainly one to show off that i do still have some kind of image retention
Did you think, were you interested in the ambiguity of the question and the answer?
Were you thinking that, did you need to have a meeting of the minds about what Beach meant?
Well, so she said, I want to go, um, I want to go to the beach.
And then she had something, she disappeared.
And it was one of these, like, I'll see you in an hour at which point you, oh, you know what it was?
She was going to ride her bike over to her mom's.
Then I was going to come pick her up.
And when I, and the assumption was when I picked her up.
I was going to know where we were going to go.
She's got a house key.
She drives, drives the bike over to the house.
And did she go there to like get a, get a swimming costume?
Yep.
And put, she's, she's transporting, you know, it's one of these, the bike back to where the bike lives kind of situation.
I understand that.
Got to get the bike over here.
A lot of people don't realize that.
That's crazy, right?
And Ari has a doorknob that you key in a code.
And so if you have the code, she has a key to my house, but she never knows where it is.
It's in a box somewhere.
But so by the time I get there, I've got this whole plan.
Well, it's two and a half hours to this place.
Because if we lived in Portland, we would just go to the ocean.
But from here to get to the ocean, the full ocean, you know, it's a two-hour drive to get over there.
No kidding.
Yeah.
Is that a large sound you have over there?
It's a very big sound.
In one of your songs, I think you mentioned something going from Cascades to Puget Sound.
Is that in one of your songs?
I don't think so.
That might be another Northwest artist.
In this case, the Puget Sound.
That might be Death Cab.
Sorry.
Oh, my gosh.
You forgive me?
No, it's okay.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
You have never mixed us up, and most people don't, so I would never.
We're on that dog label.
Oh, that happens all the time.
We're all on the dog label.
But so I get there and she says, actually, I want to go to a beach on a river.
Ooh.
And that was just like, I saw fireworks because the whole front range of the Cascades, as you just mentioned,
It's just river after river after river.
And they all big rivers.
They come down.
They have these big gravel beaches and huge rocks and waterfalls.
And you can just drive up there and park on the side of the road and get out.
And I mean, it's gnarly sometimes.
Yeah, but like if you go to like a beachy beach, like I grew up thinking of a beach as Clearwater Beach in Florida.
And I don't know if you've ever been there, but at the time it was considered like the nicest, like fine sand beach, definitely in Florida and, you know, maybe in the world.
But like people who are used to going to places in like California or Hawaii, you go and it's like sugar, you know, the sand.
But I find some of those ones you got to climb over muddy roots and risk a twisted ankle can be an exciting beach trip too.
Yeah.
Yep, and the ones that we picked, so we got to one.
I was like, oh, no, no, I know the one, and we got there, and it was like hillbilly elegy.
There were tons of people that had all set up their folding chairs so their ankles were in the river, and they had coolers everywhere, and everybody had their sunglasses on their baseball hats, and she and I kind of looked at the scene and was just like, hmm.
It was sort of like that Volkswagen commercial with pink moon where the car drives up to the party and they look at the party and they're like, we'd rather look through the moon roof.
Yeah.
Let's just keep, let's just keep riding.
So I was like, no, no, no.
We just need to go up further.
We need to go up the mountains.
We're going to go, we're on the Snoqualmie river.
We're going to find a spot.
And we got up there and it was one of these like park kind of in the culvert and climb down through some roots.
And we got to this place where there's like a,
swimming hole there are some teens that have a rope that are swinging way out over the river and flying through the air and there's a waterfall and there's a log that's kind of under the water but not so far under the water that you can't just kind of sit on it like but you're way out in the river so you've got a little chair and you're in the river and so we spent the day the two of us sitting here you know kind of jumping off logs and stuff
And it just felt like a Saturday.
Oh, believe me, I know.
It was such a Saturday.
I have a lot of Friday, Saturday confusion.
Yeah, yeah.
It did not feel like a Saturday.
Sunday, Monday, not so much.
But no, that happens to me all the time.
I also never know what time it is.
I used to know what time it is, and now it always feels like 9.30 p.m.
to me.
I say to my wife, it's light out and everybody's looking tired.
And I can tell Madeline's getting tired because she's starting to braid her hair.
And it's one of her tells.
I'm like, man, it feels like, you know what it feels like?
And she goes, 930.
And I go, yeah, it feels like 930 right now.
930 is the time that it feels like.
So you got, I think in computers, we'd have to ask Syracuse of this.
I think you call this an off by one error.
Off by one.
Right?
Kind of, because you got off on thinking, so your Saturday felt like a Friday off, maybe?
Yes, and it was complicated by the fact that this morning, see, she has swim practice at the ungodly hour of 7 o'clock in the morning, and nobody in the family supports it.
It's part of this cult in the United States of getting up early.
What is with hockey and swimming?
It's just the craziest thing.
Crew is the same way.
If you want to be on the crew team, you have to be up at 5 o'clock in the morning.
I would have been a great crew guy if practice had started at 3.
If they started a little earlier.
No, not at 3 a.m.
I'm talking about at 3 a.m.
I would have been fine too.
That's what I'm saying.
Five is late for you to start.
I would have started showing up all full of beer and ready to go.
You're just hitting the power stroke of the day.
Yeah.
Woo!
But so she has, I never saw this coming, but she has taken responsibility for getting herself up and getting to swimming, which is like, wow.
Okay.
Never saw that coming.
I'm never going to, I don't, I'm not even going to bring it up.
I'm just going to be, I'm going to nod sagely and go, ah, yes, yes.
But last night she said, my phone is dead, which is the new excuse for everything.
can you wake me up at six 30 so I can get to swim practice?
And I'm like, I'm like, yeah, of course, because I'm not going to be the one that's like six 30.
Cause she's getting herself up.
I need to be brave here.
You know, can't you plug it in?
I'm sorry.
Nevermind.
Nevermind.
So no, no, no, I'm going to tell you what happened yesterday where there was a trip to Ikea and I was not even allowed to participate in drilling holes in the wall.
How can that be true?
Oh, I'm the one with the Milwaukee drill that knows how to use it.
I don't want to talk about it.
I'm so upset about it.
Did you have to just sit and watch holes getting drilled?
No, I had to listen to somebody walk around banging with nails, and I tried to say gently from the other room, nails are really not the best fastener for that kind of application.
We have, we have anchor screws.
We have anchor screws.
We have a Milwaukee drill.
I have so many bits and I have, I, this is, this is, this, I've been preparing my whole life to help you have a Billy bookcase not fall over.
Anyways.
Okay.
So now you, so you, and you're, you're, you're a pal fellow.
Well, you're, you're, you're okay with getting up at six 30 to be a, be a daddy, the alarm clock.
Yeah.
So I get her, I gently wake her up.
I go make her some toast, get her out, out the door.
But then I'm awake.
I'm not like, now what am I doing awake?
It's seven o'clock in the morning and I don't want to be up.
No,
matter what time of day it is it's weird to be at awake awake at a time you're almost never awake it's funny when you're i remember one night i was staying with my cousins and i stayed up till 3 a.m watching now we watch i think watch snl and then like a hercules movie or something but like when when you're accessing a period of time that you almost never access it can feel kind of weird and that sounds kind of like what you're talking about here like was there must have been some part of you thinking some combination of this is a time normal people do things and how do people how do normal people do things at this
time of day well i was uh you know i'm looking out the window and it's just there goes somebody running in a different place he's clearly been running already for a half an hour because he's drenched in sweat and then here comes a lady walking her dog and then there go two kids going this way and cars in the road and i'm like what the i mean i know you're all out here i know i know you're here it feels a little bit unseemly a little bit like showing off a little bit
i don't know they don't they don't see it that way because they're the majority they see themselves as the normals yes yeah they're walking past my house going like what's he doing in there and i'm like sleeping sleeping so anyway that's partly accounts for the fact that i was sitting here in the chair at 11 a little bit you know punch drunk and my mom comes in and goes don't you have merlin
Ah, I'm always like the skin of my teeth away from like not making it, but somehow I have a support network.
That's definitely one way to look at it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I have a similar thing where if I've had unusual sleep or, you know, whatever, you know, just a million combinations of like, I don't know what the name for this would be, but being up at a time that you're not usually up.
I try to think of it as an opportunity to,
But even as positive as I try to be about it, I sometimes find it a little frustrating because I still think about how that then throws off kind of the rest of the day and potentially further on.
This is a big deal when you have a little kid, when you're focusing on what we weirdos call sleep hygiene, which is like people go like, oh, bring your kid to the party.
It's only, it starts at 7.30 and you're like, you've got to be kidding me.
Like we have a whole thing, like a third of our day, two thirds of our day is spent on schedule things.
And if we screw that up, the kid won't sleep right.
The kid misses the nap.
But you know what I'm talking about?
I don't know if yours was like this.
Our kid was very easy mostly.
But still, everybody I knew as a kid went through this where you're like, okay, if the kid, this kid's got to take a nap.
Well, maybe it starts out as bad as like, oh, the kid didn't sleep that well last night.
So you know they really need that nap this afternoon, right?
Because then maybe that'll kind of reset their schedule a little bit.
I mean, are we really that different from that?
We're children of Thanos, too.
Yeah.
No, not Thanos.
Who's the sleep one?
Dr. Octopus.
That's right.
Doc Ock.
We're all the children of Doc Ock.
Yes.
Yes, we are.
With his robot arms and his goggles.
Oh, man.
Alfred Molina.
Yeah.
He's coming for us.
Yeah.
Those arms upset me.
I don't care for it.
There's a lot to catch up with, deal with.
I don't know.
I'm trying to be minimally invasive.
Okay.
Sort of like a zebra muscle, except better.
You want to be the better zebra muscle.
Tell me about the zebra muscle.
Zebra muscle.
Zebra muscle.
They're invasive.
The zebra muscle is invasive.
Oh, I thought you meant it was one of those things that was why guys from Kenya can run faster.
Oh, they have a zebra muscle.
You remember hearing that in the 80s?
But you're talking about a kind of like a little mud dweller that you can pick up and then eat yum, right?
Yeah.
Were you talking about like a Coke bottle that falls from the sky?
Well, I don't want to keep bringing him up, but a lot of people like to say that I not only pronounce things wrong, but I hear pronunciations wrong.
Sure.
Are you talking about John?
I think of that as being a homonym.
We should just have him on this show.
He's like Jason Finn.
We should get like six guys on this show.
Oh, God.
Especially guys.
Yes.
Oh, by the way, it was a Postal Service song, and I apologize.
Oh, right.
Of course.
Postal Service.
It's from Cascades.
Sorry about that.
But no, I probably mishear things.
I've picked mussels out of mud.
I've done that.
I did that in a kayak one time.
Have you pulled mussels from a shell?
Yeah, they do it down on Canberra Sands.
They do it at Waikiki.
Don't you dare try to stump me on Squeeze.
You ever get stumped on Squeeze?
I got stumped on Squeeze once.
You know how?
John, how'd you get stumped on Squeeze?
What happened?
I was dicking around on the internet, as you do.
Yeah.
And I'm looking at the Wikipedia for Squeeze, as you do.
You think you can know it all, but there's more to know.
Oh, there's always more to know.
And I'm looking at past members of Squeeze.
Are we going to end up at Mike and the Mechanics by any chance?
No, it says Amy Mann.
Oh, is that kind of like a Ken Stringfellow type situation?
Well, so I immediately texted her.
Did she play bass in Squeeze?
I said, were you in Squeeze?
And she wrote back right away, and she was like, oh, no, not really.
I mean, maybe just for one tour or a couple of tours or whatever.
And I was like, you what now?
And she was like, oh, yeah.
You got to play Is That Love on stage with Difford and Tilbrook?
She's like, she was obviously like twisting the knife.
I think she's what they call that.
She's hi-hating you a little bit.
Yeah, she was.
She was like, oh, you mean, oh, this little old squeeze?
Oh, I guess I was in squeeze for a little while.
Which one are they?
And I was just like, how many more things are there?
How can you infuriate me more, A, and B, that's like, wow, pretty good.
Pretty good.
I was looking at their Wikipedia page, irrespective of this, and there you were.
They should warn you about stuff like that.
The joke I was trying to make, which is not useful to anybody, was Paul Carrick.
After Jules Holland left, Paul Carrick joined for, I think, Sweets with a Stranger.
He's the guy who sang Tempted.
Yeah, that's right.
Along with Elvis Costello.
He had the best voice, they say.
There's a lot of Elvis Costello on those tracks, too.
Yeah.
But, you know, there's always the one, right?
But then he was in Michael Mechanics.
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me come?
It's Silent Running, they called it.
There are the fellas that are really good.
And just because they're really good, it doesn't mean that they necessarily end up in the White House, for instance.
Oh.
Well, okay.
I also think this, I don't know why, this feels related to something to talk about in other places where I talk more about movies and TV shows, but the joke amongst my friends and me, and the number varies, but there's only 11 actors in England.
That's why I'm kind of obsessed with show me everything Anton Lesser has been in, because he's been in everything.
Or David Bradley.
David Bradley is the key.
The guy who plays Filch and the guy who plays Walter Frey.
you know the guy who can't keep his daughter straight you know that guy that guy's been in everything he's been in everything and I think it's because these guys are above all they're professionals the guys and gals he's in all those gangster films that guy David Bradley's the guy he's let's see he's um Walter Frey I think is a famous one Filch you know lurking in the corridors in Harry Potter he's got the cat anyways that guy uh and he's he's in a lot of stuff Anton Lesser you know he's in Andor and lots of other things he's the maester who got thrown out of the citadel and became yeah
Oh, the maester.
Cersei's guy, remember?
Yeah, sure.
It's a shame you have to die alone in such a cold, lonely place.
And all the little kids stab the guy.
Remember that?
Yeah, sure.
He's like, oh, brings back the mountain.
No spoilers.
Brings back the mountain.
And then Cersei says, well, will he be?
Anyways, but I wonder if the same is true in music where like, you know, there seems like there's so much more unnecessary dignity in America where people are like, well, I can't go do that project.
Like, I don't want to be on that package tour.
It's kind of unusual to be somebody like Alex Chilton, who was like, you know, and who had a replacements album named after him.
Yeah.
And he produced the replay.
But like he was.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
He like, you know, he was he's pretty high up amongst amongst obscure characters.
Yeah.
But he would still go out and do package tours where he'd go out and sing box stop songs.
Give me a ticket for an airplane.
That's unusual in America.
What did I say?
Excess dignity?
Too much dignity here.
I was on your Threads app, or maybe it was your Blue Sky app.
Whichever one is yours.
You're in the Blue Skies.
And somebody was like, you know, one of these things.
They're driving engagement.
I bet it's a bot.
I bet it's somebody.
I bet it's somebody in Crimea.
But they were like, what are some obscure records that I've never heard of or that were underappreciated?
You know, this type of thing.
And I like to go on the Internet and stir up shit and say Oasis sucks.
You should get back to the squeeze entry.
and um and so i said so i'm looking through the things and they're it's just exactly what you would expect people are like oh matthew sweet's girlfriend it's like you know what that record is not under it didn't become it's not like it's not like leonard skinner's golden platinum but it did do fine you know like we've we've all heard that record
and it's great but it's not like an unknown album no i i i know i i absolutely i said it also varies by time then right i said sunset valley's ice pond sunset valley's ice pond is the great record that was never discovered by americans sunset valley's ice pond
If you don't go listen to Sunset Valley's Ice Pond today, then I don't want to tell you.
But if that's not well-known enough, you won't get plaudits.
If it's too well-known, if somebody goes, I'm thinking of the same time as Matthew Sweet, if somebody goes like, oh, the first Sugar album.
Yeah, right.
XTC's moonlarking.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Same idea.
Same idea.
And you're like, well, actually, you know, that's kind of one of my all-time favorites.
Yeah, during that time.
You know what I'll toss out?
Remember that time we sat in the car and I cried?
I think Wish You Were Here by Badfinger counts as a record like that, where even people who like Badfinger may not know Wish You Were Here.
It's a very, very sad album.
Just when you think they can't get any lower, they somehow get lower.
Those guys were just when you think.
Just when you think.
Those guys were pretty sad.
You think, right?
Oh, well, if the Beatles are the ones that put you on their record label, how can you have any problems?
What could go wrong?
Look at Jackie Lomax.
He's huge now.
I was watching a video on your Blue Sky or whatever.
On my Blue Sky, yeah.
Thanks for coming by, by the way.
It really helped people discover the show.
This gal was in Turkey, and she had a soccer ball, and she was doing all these soccer ball tricks.
Like keeping uppies?
Yeah, that type of thing in the public square in Turkey.
And I was like, you know, having been to Turkey, I was like, wow, that's amazing.
Like what I'm sure...
she's experiencing in terms of a concentrated male gaze because she was in a plus people somebody's filming it yeah yeah she was in a she was in a small outfit and i and especially small john by turkish standards by turkish standards i would say the outfit itself goes from head to toe but it's like lean the the tailoring is is uh i think we call that um body con it's body hugging body conscious yeah yeah and
and so but i'm watching her do these tricks these soccer ball tricks and my first thought irrespective of uh of gender because i don't really see gender no thank you was um like her body is amazing perfectly fit for this job and i could not do these tricks if i started training now and trained for 20 years i could not do these tricks oh and i thought
No, there's no way.
She's one of these people that can bend over backwards.
Like one of those, like Nadia Komenich?
Like one of those, like you start them from bowling.
If I started bowling really regularly when I was eight, I think I'd be huge now.
I mean, for me to get down on the ground to assemble like a Lego toy and then stand back up and go to the kitchen.
I feel like I can hear a lot of cracking noises.
My God, I basically need a team of helpers.
It probably sounds like Davy Jones is playing some maracas.
Yeah, exactly.
We get up and down.
But I wanted to say on this, on your blue sky, I wanted to say like, wow, she has the, you know, like if, oh no, no, no.
What I wanted to say was, what would it be like to have a perfect body?
Yeah.
And it wasn't a comment on, uh, on her having my preferred body.
It was just like the perfect body.
And then immediately I knew that she was,
didn't think she had a perfect body that she had some issues with it she was like my ankles are too big or my eyelashes are too long or my fingernails are too soft or whatever it is nobody thinks that they've got it made it's true everybody she's probably got something where she's like ugh why are my teeth so white or whatever it is yeah yeah and uh why are my teeth so white
You think about that all the time?
It looks like I have veneers and I don't.
God, why am I so, like, healthy and happy?
God, it sucks.
It's almost like it's something inside of me that can't be happy.
Almost.
Yeah, I'm finding that not everybody wants to live to be 900.
It's such a surprise.
Really?
Yeah.
So when I told you what I think I heavily implied, I think the takeaway, as they say at the New York Times, no fucking way would I want to be 969.
Right.
That's what you said.
And you seem kind of not just like surprised as in like, oh, I figured Merlin would want to live longer.
But it seemed like a more basic sort of, well, why wouldn't everyone want to live that long?
Right?
Yeah.
Isn't that just what we all are thinking?
Not that that's weird, but that's what I got from it.
Yeah.
Is it, aren't we all thinking all the time that the number one unfairness is that we don't live to be 900 and what, having talked to you about it, what I'm discovering from comments from other people, uh, who've listened to our program is that they also don't want to live to be 900.
Huh?
And, you know, and I'm not saying that I figured I was the outlier.
No, I don't think so.
I'm deeply practical about certain things.
There's only a couple of people who have written and said, actually, the shorter, the better.
Like, get me out of here.
And I'm like, you know, I don't know if I'm the one to talk to.
Yeah, like nasty, short, and brutal, like Bob Hoskins.
But most of the people are like, no, I see it as being a thing that comes to a logical conclusion at a good point somewhere in the time when it's hard to get up off the floor.
And I'm like, that's me.
That's now.
I don't want that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, I want to live in New York with one of those superinos.
One of the trickier parts of your speculation is your codicil.
And again, I want to just be very clear.
I have not received any formal training about genies.
Compensation?
I may be entitled to compensate.
You know, money's been set aside.
I did serve at Camp Lejeune in 1986.
But here's the thing.
You know, I understand why people say that, especially when they're young.
But my genie thoughts include things like, okay, yeah, okay, it's you, but you're still slightly delayed at the DMV for 900 years.
There's no end in sight.
My thoughts tend to move toward the Kafkaesque in things like this.
So I wondered about this.
I woke up in the middle of the night the other night, and I was like, wait a minute.
The first thing you ask the genie
is genie in your honest opinion what's the best thing to ask for from a genie i'm gonna burn one of my three questions that's okay so that counts as a wish yeah counts as a wish i wish that you would tell me the thing that is best to ask for
And the genie has to tell you the truth.
The genie has to tell me the truth.
And that's the jam up, though, is their version of the truth could have a lot of, you know, a lot of ins out, a lot of outs, a lot of what have yous.
Yeah.
And that's why, John, that's why you're so careful about the way you word these things.
Well, and that's the thing.
What if you do that?
Okay.
And the genie says, you know what?
You know what?
All of the things that I've ever given people through the thousands of years, not one of them has ever made somebody happy.
And what you should do is use those wishes to help other people and to live your best life.
But what do you do if the genie says that?
Then you're going to say, like, actually, no.
I got to be honest.
It feels like just another trick.
Yeah, right.
Like, no, give me $100 million.
Who are you kidding, genie?
Like, I know it's not going to make me happy, but come on.
Come on.
Well, I think about things like, you know, you've had a young person in your life.
And, you know, I think we all go through phases, you know, where like, you know, I don't want to get into it.
But like, I used to refer to my kid as a candy lawyer.
I always thought my kid was so good at coming up with these crazy negotiations that I'd never even would entertain, but in this very plausible way would try.
But the thing is, for a variety of reasons, in most cases, the parent, if it's a parent and a child, the parent will win that round of...
Airsats negotiations for a variety of reasons including that they're better at arguing and can see traps coming I feel like the genie is kind of the John in that situation We're like no matter you got to be careful because like you know I'm saying I don't want to be I don't want to be
fatalistic about it, but it seems like almost anything you ask the genie, it could just make it worse for you.
And the more you think you're, you know, this is very Alan Watts, but like, you know, the more you think your angles are covered, the more you may be covering, covering yourself in future pain.
But you've thought about that.
i mean that's the thing he or she you know it's not like a it's not like a thing right i don't i don't really see genie gender but they have had thank you thousands of years stuck in a bottle just to think up ways just to think up answers to your dumb wishes
There's no way that the genie hasn't considered that somebody one day might come along and use their first wish to wish for the best wishes.
I got an idea.
I'll try to get the genie to reveal something they'd prefer not to reveal.
Well, you're the first person who's thought of that.
This will be very tough for me.
Well.
Well.
I don't know.
I don't know.
But the thing is, doesn't the genie secretly want you to succeed?
I don't want to get to, boys, I don't understand.
My understanding of why genies have the power they seem to have eludes me.
And I feel a little bit like I understand the basic rules of the game that I've picked up from literature over the years.
Right.
You know, you got to know the weight of a laden African swallow and whatnot.
Sure.
But I'm not, I gotta be honest.
You know what it is?
I think I'm very intimidated about getting it wrong and signing myself up for something much worse than 60 years of life.
Yeah.
Well, and this is, I think, why I think about it because I don't, you know, like I've thought all this through, right?
If there's a knock on my door and there's somebody there in mirrored sunglasses with an earpiece and he says, John Roderick, and I go, yes.
I'm prepared for five eventualities okay right like that could be oh I can I can easily think of at least three there's obviously the one where you get a bag over your head and you're in the trunk of the car that's right there's the one where it's like terrible sir would you step into the back of this black SUV yeah but then could it also be the interstellar where they got to find a way to get Matthew McConaughey back in the program
There's at least one of those.
That's you.
You're the anchorman, right?
Well, you could be the anchorman.
That's right.
I keep thinking he's going to open the door to the black SUV, and I'm going to look in there, and there's going to be a- Samuel L. Jackson.
Samuel L. Jackson's in there.
That would be nice.
That would be so cool.
Get in my motherfucking limo.
It's going to be a 32-year-old tech whiz with some kind of Google glass on,
who's like john roderick oh my god come with me if you want to live the legend hey wow oh my god finally you know get in we're going on and i'm like oh no like it's uh it's somebody that uh you know that went to max fun con in in 2017 and now i'm now i'm the key to something they're trying to unlock okay
And that would be fun.
I mean, I'm into that.
That'll be fun.
Could it be that it's also, maybe now we go a little bit more toward Men in Black or Dirty Dozen.
Could it be something, see, in the past we've talked about it, and I've never really known, and I've never wanted to know precisely who the Anchorman is, except I've always understood that the Anchorman is a role, someone who mediates between the UFOs and the normals.
That's right.
And is able to hopefully achieve
salutary results for both but the point is if you are the anchorman you got the job and that's just how it works right there's there's there's those kinds of things i could you be getting called into a dirty dozen could there be a lee marvin out there who's pulling you in like in the case in the case of matthew mcconaughey you know uh uh what's what's his famous line what does he say yeah yeah yeah or whatever all right all right all right i guess that's it
Yeah, yeah.
And you would say, Samuel L. Jackson says, get in my motherfucking limo.
And you go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And get in there.
That would be more like Interstellar.
But then you got something like Dirty Dozen where it's like, guys, this is, we don't say this anymore.
It's a self-harm mission.
Like this is Jim Brown.
No spoilers.
Jim Brown may not come back from this.
Right.
But, you know, and then Telly Savalas, he's doing a little bit of freelance work, if you know what I mean.
I have always been, I've always been prepared for somebody to say, we're assembling a team.
You really seem ready for that.
But I honestly, when I review, when I review my own history, when I look at my resume, which now extends to 40 pages.
Wow.
That just say all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I cannot think of a team... Just put it on LinkedIn.
I cannot think of a team that anyone would be assembling where I would have the unique skills that no one else could do the job.
That does not sound like the John that I know.
Well, the thing is I have a variety of skills.
If you're assembling a team of one, I might be... At least I want to identify this Les Paul.
But if it's like...
Okay, we need somebody that can scale a wall.
We need somebody that can open a safe.
We need somebody that can decode a plan.
We need a British man with a mustache and a beret who has a bomb in a suitcase.
Who has a bomb in a suitcase.
That's more Guns of Navarone.
Is that more Guns of Navarone?
There's always a guy with a... Especially David Nevin, right?
It's Guns of Navarone, and then it's also Force 10 from Navarone.
Force 10?
Is that the one with Harrison Ford?
He's in one of those.
He's in one of those.
But anyway, you know, they're going to come down and then they're going to find me and they're going to be like, we need a guy that can talk extemporaneously for an hour and a half about whatever is sitting right in front of him.
Like that's no team needs that.
like oh we need somebody maybe we need somebody to walk into the castle that's occupied by the nazis and just baffle them with bullshit for 20 minutes while we break in the back i guess maybe i'm that team guy but i don't i don't have david nivens like um
He has that aristocratic mean.
And I don't.
I seem like a guy from the West.
See, maybe.
Okay, I don't know a lot about the practicalities of modern team building when it comes to things like operations and stuff like that.
I can tell you this.
I watch, unintentionally, usually, I watch a lot of what I've come to just call B-plus TV.
It's just what my wife and I call B-plus TV.
Good man.
I mean, sometimes it's very good.
Sometimes, like Black Doves, that's very good B-plus TV.
So the plus, it's leaning heavily on the plus.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of it's really a gentleman's C minus.
But you get something like that stupid, oh, God, the waterfront, which I want to be great because it's got the guy from Mindhunter in it.
And it's not, oh, God, more B plus.
And there's just so much B plus.
I was watching one where Daisy Ridley from the Star Wars movie is somebody who cleans windows.
And she's got problems.
Let me just make this really easy for you, John.
It's Die Hard, except instead of John McClane, it's a woman who can clean windows.
Oh.
Okay.
I'm just tossing this out there.
I like Daisy Ridley.
I think she was grossly underpaid for the Star Wars films, and I've argued publicly with people about it.
Here's the thing.
That's a really stupid plot.
But what I'm trying to say to you is, you might be a window washer and not know it.
I think you're hard on yourself.
I think you're extemporaneous skills at understanding the vibe of the... I'm imagining what now... In Germany, would you be going into like... Would you be fighting Nazis, do you think?
Well, I hope I wouldn't be siding with the Nazis.
Sorry.
I mean, it's current time.
So it could be... I feel like I'm more of a cold warrior.
A cold warrior.
Yeah, that's kind of got square-shaped glasses and a long coat.
Like if Kissinger wasn't evil.
Yes, exactly.
I'm wearing a Homburg.
I'm standing in the rain on the Kissinger.
You ever play that game with a suspect?
Good Kissinger, bad Kissinger?
I'm standing in the Alexander place.
You're going to undermine them with our relationship with Syria.
Yeah.
Somebody comes by with an umbrella.
I'm holding a brave case.
That's what I was put on this.
Can you have a Hamburg?
Of course, we both have Hamburgs.
Everybody's got a Hamburg.
Remember that one time I said to you on the internet before I knew you were back on the internet, I was watching a movie where the guy who plays Mance Rayder is a guy with a Hamburg in a team spy movie.
And I was like, I think of what I said to my... It's Munich, right?
Are you talking about Munich?
Munich!
How great is that movie?
Oh, it's a really marvelous movie.
And I said, I have this uncanny ability to watch a movie and instantly know which character John Roderick should be.
You're totally Mance Rayder in the Homburg.
I'm Mance Rayder in the Game of Thrones.
You think so?
Nobody likes to cave people.
I mean, who are you in Game of Thrones?
Who are you?
He brought together 90 tribes.
I know, that's what I'm saying.
That's the anchorman.
He's the anchorman of the North.
Whoa!
Whoa!
Yes!
Those Northern tribes, they don't want to be friends with each other.
Are you kidding me?
You know who you don't want to run into is the Thens.
The Thens, they ate Ollie's mom in front of him.
That's why he has such a hard-on about the, I call him the free folk.
Yeah, the free folk.
But you, Merlin Mann, you're not going to end up on the wall, right?
Well, it depends.
I don't think.
Would I volunteer to go?
No, I'd be more like Sam, where my dad thinks I'm lame, so he sends me to the wall.
Yeah, but I just feel like you would be, you would find some way out of it, unlike Sam who lumbers into it.
They would make the announcements right before we do the big pledge, right?
They announce everybody's job.
And they go, John Roderick, he's going to be a ranger.
Jason Finn, he's going to be a builder, like Brandon.
Merlin, he's absolutely going to be a steward.
And I would say, thank you.
Jon Stewart was Jon Stewart excuse me Jon Stewart Jon Stewart when he went to the wall and now his watch has ended I feel like you're a King's Landing guy all day you're not a man of the north you're not a man of the north you say and I would be from what do they call it Gin Alley maybe
Yeah.
Yeah.
Although you'd be you'd be a lofty gin alley character.
You'd be sitting up on a high stool.
He's going to be a falling from grace guy because the whole reason John gets the Mormont sword is because everybody's disappointed in Jor because, you know, he, you know, you can fall from grace.
You get you an onion knight.
They got to cut off your fingers because you're slaving.
And he says, he says piracy is different from smuggling.
And I think that's a good distinction.
I don't think you're a little too careful to fall from grace though.
Oh, come on.
You've had a lot of opportunities to fall from grace and so far you've done pretty well.
And so if I was at the wall, I would just be, I'm less likely to get into some shit.
Probably.
I'm mostly just cleaning pots.
No, no, you're not a pot cleaner.
No, I think you're doing some weird sorcery somewhere.
You're in some dark room doing sorcery.
Sam starts as a steward, and then because of Maester Eamon, of course, he kind of becomes another great British actor that's in lots of things.
Doesn't Maester Eamon do the best...
I'm sorry, I hope this isn't culturally insensitive.
He plays an unsighted person on the show.
Yeah, that's correct.
And his portrayal of that is stunning to me.
I think that actor is amazing, the guy who plays Maester Heyman.
But he's the one like, I think, like Jor Mormont, he understands... Wait, I think I misspoke about my Mormonts earlier.
But anyway, the guy who was the head guy before he got killed by the free folk, you know?
I would find a way to... They both appreciated something in John that other people didn't see.
You know what I'm saying?
And then you got that one guy who's a real... Who's that one guy that's a piece of shit that runs things after... You know what?
I don't want to talk about this anymore.
I'm sorry.
I've talked too much about Game of Thrones, and I'm sorry.
No, it's okay.
It's all right.
I tell people that The Leftovers is my favorite TV show, but the truth is Game of Thrones might be my favorite TV show, which was really basic of me.
My favorite TV show is 30 Rock.
I think I'm more basic than you.
I think I'm very basic.
Really?
I never hear you talk about 30 Rock.
Have you seen a lot of them?
It's not like Parks and Rec.
I'm not like that kind of basic.
Whoa.
Boy, that's a hot take on Blue Sky.
Merlin's going to take a little bit.
Did you know I have a unified field theory of the Mike Shuraverse?
i don't know what that is and i'm not sure i want to know okay um hey i have watched 30 rock okay that's a very good show yeah during the pandemic i i can't believe we haven't talked about this i was sitting around and i was like oh this pandemic am i right yeah and everybody was like oh big shrugs you know boy and i'm sitting around john
Oh, no, no.
But I did like never take off my pajamas.
I went to Uniqlo and I got some pajamas.
I just wore them.
I didn't even go there.
I got them online.
Yeah.
Because you couldn't go places.
Do you remember?
We were locked down.
We were locked down, John.
I remember it.
And I don't know how I started.
I had to cut my hair with cacti at first.
Well, I do that anyway.
Well, now I'm great at it.
I did the sides in one and a half.
You should see.
Oh, no.
We were talking about that.
No, no.
I redid it.
I redid it as one and a half.
And now it looks better.
Now it looks good.
Looks slender as hell.
But I don't know what it was.
I was looking at the Wikipedia page for Squeeze or whatever, and it said that Tina Fey had been in the band.
Yes.
And I was like, okay, Tina Fey.
Let's see what there is to see about Tina Fey.
Maybe I was watching her do Sarah Palin or something.
Yeah.
and i watched uh the first episode of 30 rock the first episode and uh or maybe the girly show stuff yeah or maybe it was that i was on blue sky that didn't exist yet and somebody put up like some tick tock of it where she was like oh my god you know and i said look at that so i watched i don't like that blue man
The whole show's funny to me.
I'm sorry.
It's a joke.
It's a joke machine gun, that show.
It's a machine gun.
And I watched it.
And then I was like, Mr. Watching 30 Rock.
And so all through the pandemic, I watched 30 Rock.
And I was so happy with my friends, my good friends from the 30 Rock universe.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then I got to the end of it.
Yeah.
And the pandemic wasn't over.
And I was so depressed.
I moped around for like three days, just like meh.
And Ari said, what's the matter with you?
And I was like, I'm out of 30 Rock.
All my friends are gone.
That's me with Taskmaster right now.
I'm totally out of Taskmaster.
I've watched an entire season of Taskmaster on Friday.
it's see and then you're then you're like where are my friends yeah no no but i totally agree with you and there's so much stuff that i really imprinted on during that period i think you should leave the tim robinson show that's now one of my favorite things ever um the oh tiger king was a big one for us another netflix show but you know there's only there's only you know so many ways that you can like pass the day
Well, here's what you're out of 30 Rock.
What do you do at that point?
Ari said, listen, people rewatch shows.
Oh, yeah.
And I said, what do you mean?
She was like, you don't have to stop watching 30.
You can just start at the beginning.
And it had never occurred to me.
Huh.
Even as you are aware on some level that this is something I do on the reg as a theoretical friend of yours, you're aware that I'm almost always in the middle of some rewatch.
Yeah, right.
You're kind of aware of that.
I mean, I know we don't talk about TV.
My daughter is somebody that reads a book and then rereads it and then reads it again.
And I'm a very slow reader.
When I sit down with her and see how fast she reads a book...
I'm like, in the time she reads five books, I'm still reading this book.
I get that on even a lower level, which is I'd show my family something I regarded as funny on my phone.
I hold it up to them, and within half a second, they both kind of make a noise.
And it's like, A, I'm like, wait a minute.
There's no way you read that already.
And then B, I'm like, why did you not think that was funny?
They read it fast and they don't think it's funny.
I read slow and I think everything's funny.
Who's having the good life now?
Fucking idiots.
Yeah.
Well, and I, and when my kid was little, I was like, hey, you know, read slowly.
That's where all the, all the information is, all the words.
They have words that are in between them that aren't written down.
It's the other words that are like the rest are almost as important as the notes.
Yeah.
And she was like, shut up.
And then I realized, oh, she has a different thing.
She's going to read the book six times.
And each time, I guess, gets something new out of it.
And so, you know, let her be, go with God.
But so Ari said, you can watch 30 Rock again.
And I went downstairs, like I kind of tiptoed downstairs and I turned the TV on.
Wait, did you feel, real quick, were you feeling like shame or...
I'm not sure.
Because it was new to you.
It's a new idea.
You weren't aware you could watch something more than once.
You in particular could watch something more.
You know other people have done that, but that seemed like something you could do.
And were you chasing it?
Did you feel like it was off-brand for you?
I felt like to be somebody that liked a television show.
was already hard for me to face.
And the fact that it was a television show that was so fluff, like light, it's light entertainment.
It's la-di-da-di-da.
Even though you and I both know, and most of our listeners presumably know, that actually the entire history of the world is encoded in 30 Rock, and every single joke on top of every other joke is all part of the massive joke that God and the genies are playing on us.
And that Kenneth is eternal.
I still couldn't be, I couldn't get my head around the back.
Were you mad when you found out that he's an eternal angel or had you seen the clues?
It's all in there from the very beginning.
John, I have to tell you.
I have to tell you.
I try to deal with this, but I've had it with the spoilers, people.
If you cared about this, you already would have watched this.
The thing is, our spoiler culture has gotten so completely out of control that now there's just a reflexive shushing and boo...
on anybody who talks about what happens on a show.
Oh, I'm sorry, I won't mention that character until you've taken the time to watch, let me check, eight seasons of television, and then I'll ask you how you feel about it, and you'll go like, oh, I didn't really notice that, probably.
Do you think that your abandonment of spoiler culture is the beginning?
It's a tipping point culturally, and then it's just going to be one domino after another?
No, no, no.
I'm like one of those people that left in 33.
Like, good riddance.
I'm done.
You know, I'm out of there.
The all in Paul is how you're going to deal with the rest of this.
So I crept down there, and I was like...
is this really that important to me?
Am I really so, am I really so wherever I am right now?
Yeah.
Where I am responding to now a 15 year old television show where I miss my friends.
I miss my friends and I turned it on and I started watching episode one and I have the experience that I think a lot of people have who read books multiple times where I was like, I don't remember any of this.
Can I toss out one you might not have remembered?
Yeah.
Rachel Dratch is in every episode as a different character.
Every episode as a different character.
And I think in the first season.
She was supposed to be Jenna, right?
Jenna was written for her.
Yeah.
And like Magna, the cleaning lady.
Remember, she does make appearances later.
Yes.
But there's stuff like that.
There's also just like the fact that it's... In retrospect, this will not mean a lot to people, but there's that weird phenomenon that I don't have a name for, but should have a name where...
very strangely similar media things come out at the same time.
It's almost like discovering calculus or something where you've got a B movie and then the other B movie, or you've got Napoleon and another Napoleon movie or, you know, star Wars and close encounters, you know, but that came out around the same time.
I think, uh,
as studio 60s yeah right which is sunset strip yeah pretty different approach but well so that was why i didn't watch it at the time because the two shows came out at once all of the reviews were like two shows about saturday night live one of them's by the walking talking guy and one of them's this crazy chick tina flame wow how did she even get here and i was like no thanks to both yeah yep yep yep and what's crazy is during the period
When all of the people were guest starring on the show, that was the period where I was, you know, kind of getting into that world of media.
So there were a lot of people.
In the early seasons?
Well, no.
Later seasons, you get more like you get Will Forte, obviously, which is hilarious.
Yeah, he's marvelous.
In two different roles.
He plays the assistant guy to Pee Wee Herman in that early episode.
Right.
Jack, you know, I love my big beef and cheddar.
I've never seen it.
But then and then later on, he comes back as Jenna's boyfriend.
You'll remember.
You got those.
But then earlier on, you got like that kind of dumb episode with Seinfeld and the guy from Friends that wasn't all that good.
Some of those are a little bit clunky.
But then you get Will Arnett.
And when Job comes on, I think that helps the show a lot.
I just saw Will Arnett the other day in a Sopranos episode.
What?
He's playing the husband of the Italian gal who pretends to be like a big-haired... She's an FBI agent, but she pretends to be... That sounds B+.
That sounds very B+.
In order to entrap the other gal.
Yeah.
Anyway, it was in Wolf Hall.
He's practically a baby in Wolf Hall.
It was during that period that I was traveling around the country meeting show business people.
And I sat and had dinner with Scott Adsit in Chicago in 2000 whatever.
Not aware that he was a television actor.
Pete.
Yeah.
Not aware that he was.
I met him backstage at a show once.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's a very nice man.
I thought he seemed a little grumpy.
Well, but I mean, you know, that's his.
But you know, it's hard.
I mean, you know this better than anybody.
You know, he's been in a lot of great stuff, though.
And I think he's very good.
I think he's very good.
He's very good.
Yes.
But watching the kind of guest stars come through there over and over, I was like, oh, I met that guy.
Oh, look at that.
I met that guy.
Oh, I know that guy.
Yeah.
And it was just because I was in, I was like always the first of five guests on somebody's dumb podcast or whatever during that period.
And so it was like a...
It was like a time travel, too.
You know, Hodgman is on one.
He's like a counselor.
No, he's a weird stalker, and it's very clear that his agent got him on the show, and he did not click.
Mm-hmm.
Because his character is really weird.
And then they just write him out.
He was doing those sort of like Patton Oswalt type roles were like, you know, like, like him on an agents of shield or something where like he could be sort of the nerd, you know, or the professor or the whatever.
Yeah.
He's being like the weird nerd.
Yeah.
The great tragedy of Hodgman is that he's not meant for.
He's not in this world.
Those, those jobs.
Oh, and it's what he, and it's what he wants.
You know, sometimes you want something and it's not what the, you're like, Jeannie, I want to be a television star.
Yep.
Yep.
The genie's like, okay.
And then you're like, Oh, this wasn't what I wanted at all.
And that's kind of that.
But so I started watching 30 Rock again, and I watched it all the way through, and I delighted in every minute of it.
Did you find that there were some things you enjoyed more, like seeing the genesis of something?
absolutely and just like oh now i get it like some of these characters you know the slow introduction of angie stuff like that is really funny yeah and then later on you're like this is my favorite guy what was i even thinking before that i thought that this was like a weak storyline this is the best and then what's crazy is last year
We're not in the pandemic anymore.
I'm sitting around.
Outside of those extraordinary circumstances, did you feel an itch?
Well, so Marlowe was really into Brooklyn 911.
Right, right, right.
and uh it's got a sense as well it's got a sense of humor that she really enjoyed all the characters very broad characters um and so she was like i really love this show and i don't know where she heard about it i don't know how she got on this but suddenly i'm getting dragged into watching uh brooklyn 9 11 9 9 11 and the
There are a lot of people on that show that I met in the times when I was in the Hollywood, like Joe Trulio.
Joe LoTruhulio.
We did stuff together a lot because he was part of the Thrilling Adventure Hour.
And so I start watching this show and I'm like, oh, yeah, I know these guys.
That's Mark Evan Jackson.
Like, he's like, oh, I love that guy.
He's like, that's, he's great.
That's Holt's husband.
Yeah, right.
But he's also, you know, he's like one of the big stars of Thrilling Adventure Hour.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so we're watching the show and then I was like, you know what?
I really miss my friends on 30 Rock.
Yeah.
And I said, Marla, do you think you're old enough to watch 30 Rock?
And she said, I have no idea what you're talking about, but Brooklyn 9-11 has all these fart jokes.
And I was like, I think it's fine.
And so I watched it a third time with her.
Did she enjoy it?
Well, yeah, but... Were you able to tell, like, were the characters that she kind of liked?
Oh, I think she loved it.
It's just that it's one of those things where, what did she say the other day?
She was watching something and she said, oh, you know what it was?
It was...
I think it was on a more recent rewatch of Jake and Finn.
Adventure time.
That she was like, there's a lot of jokes here I didn't get the first 70 times I watched this show.
Yeah, for sure.
And I was like, well, that's, and she said, oh, it's one of those shows.
Every character gets so much richer.
She said it's one of those shows.
Oh, she said it's like the Toy Story movies where kids think it's funny and adults think it's sad.
Show me the lie.
I was like, hmm, I guess that's right.
It's a bunch of toys that are going to get burned.
Who cares?
Unless it's an analogy about the Holocaust, which is my theory.
When you forget, that's when they go get burned.
Never forget.
That's the whole point of Brooklyn 9-11.
Is never forget.
Yeah, right.
Well, I actually, I think we probably talked about this, didn't we?
That I had the great fortune during this time, during this period, to spend a weekend with Lee Ungrich.
I hear good things about him.
And he's a marvelous man.
I've heard he's really sharp.
Nice, but sharp.
I've heard he's sharp.
I went and watched Toy Story 3 as a result of it, and it's another one of these things where I was like, I spent a weekend with this guy thinking he was a really nice fella, and then I went and watched his movie and was just like...
Balling in the theater.
I'm like, why didn't I watch this movie before I met the guy?
Because maybe I would have been.
Oh my God.
Remember when they were looking out of the box?
Oh my God.
It's tough.
It's tough.
There's a lot of tough stories in this, in the naked city.
I still keep my Woody in a place where I can see him a few times a week.
Just out of.
Oh, is that right?
I consider it to be kind of like Pascal's wager where I'm like, well, if he is sentient, I'd like.
You only look at your Woody three times a week?
Well, it's not really my choice.
I used to look at my Woody a lot.
I used to get... Married life, am I right?
See, now... Okay.
Now we're turning into some kind of British comedy from the 80s.
No, but seriously, though.
I've watched that show three times.
And what I really want to do is I want to watch Counterpart.
What was that sound?
Was that Woody?
It might have been Woody.
Was that the big naked blue man?
No, I'm sorry.
I tried to hit the pedal in time.
I'm not as fast as I used to be.
It was something caused a voice assistant to kick on, and I'm sorry about that.
Oh, what did it say?
Oh, I don't know.
I was listening to you.
Oh.
Anyway, you know the television show Counterpart?
I'm sure I've told you about it.
Starring J.K.
Simmons.
Mm-hmm.
When you said B plus television.
Careful.
I was like.
I think that's a pretty good show.
I think it's an A plus show.
Yeah, for sure.
But they B plus it right into only having two seasons and then canceling it.
They gentlemen seed it.
What do you give Patriot?
Two seasons and then gone.
What do you give season one of Patriot?
What did I call what?
Hi, first time caller.
The Amazon Prime series called Patriot.
Oh, you've been trying to get me to watch Patriot since it first came out.
Am I to take this to mean that you have perhaps not yet watched the TV show Patriot?
I watched, I tried to watch the first season.
I watched it.
I watched it.
All right.
And the acoustic guitar performances in the clubs.
Helps him with his feelings.
it was very i was it was very i struggled through them i struggled it was a struggle and i and i and at a certain point i struggled my way out all right never mind never mind not for you not for but i know but i see people talk about it all the time like greatest show in all of history i think it's an extremely strong first season yeah but but but you know these things are not for everybody
Do the other seasons then diminish in quality?
The first season of Patriot is one of my favorite things of all time.
And for whatever reason, I have not watched the second season.
What?
That's so unmodelable about you.
Not true.
Not accurate.
Well, no, I'm not trying to be difficult, but I have been pegged by some people.
Fourth reference.
And they saw your Woody more than three times a week.
Well, I've been pegged as somebody who has careless whispers.
I was there with you.
It was the theme of my prom, John.
Careless whisper?
I went to two proms.
This might be our ding out.
Yeah, I went to a prom when I was a junior, and I went to a prom when I was a senior at my high school.
When I was a junior, it was – I might get these confused, but I can tell you for sure that of those two years, you have a song.
Usually, these are the best of times by Styx for a long time would always be the prom thing.
Because we lived in the 70s all the way into the 80s.
The 70s continued so much longer than 1979.
Or another one, these are the best tough times.
Tommy Shaw saved that band.
So one time it was Careless Whisper.
I think that might have been senior year.
Junior year, I think it was Faithfully by Journey.
So both of our prom theme songs were about infidelity.
Oh, wow.
Yeah.
Right.
I voted for I Will Follow by U2.
Good.
And I think it got one vote.
Just me.
Imagine that.
Do you know what happened?
Local cover band.
Wouldn't that be great?
Everybody hitting the dance floor doing that Belinda Carlisle dance?
Call the cops.
You know what happened in our case?
No, what?
It was a battle between the socials and the conserves.
Oh.
Oh, I see.
What do they call them?
The Soch's and the, what do they call the other ones?
Well, we call them Conserves.
No, no, no, no.
It was Soch's and Conserves.
Oh, I guess I'm thinking of an S.E.
Hinton novel, but anyways.
Yeah, that's the weird thing about Outsiders or something.
But the, uh, the socials run things like prom and yearbook and the conserves run things like math club and newspaper.
But, uh, in my senior year or junior year, I forget which one, but the conserves really started feeling like they should run everything.
What year is this?
87, 88?
This is 85, 86.
Okay.
And the conserves, including my high school girlfriend, Kelly, who's appeared on this show before.
Hi, Kelly.
Said, we're not going to let...
we're not going to take it and we're not going to let the socials pick some dumb social song like careless whisper we're going to twisted sister we're going to pick a conserve song okay and it's going to be something by the beatles and it's going to be something by the beatles pre-1965.
oh so something like in my life
Yeah.
And really?
And the socials were like, what?
Stay in your lane.
Screw you.
This is prom.
This is what we do.
We are socials.
Oh, man.
I'd love to know what they came up with.
Well, and whatever their song was, it was something by OMT.
Could it be Brian Adams?
Could it be Brian Adams Heaven?
No, it was pre-Brian Adams.
Talking about 84, 85, 86, somewhere in there.
Maybe not pre-Brian Adams, but it would have been.
It cuts like a nice summer 69 came out.
Yeah, it would have been something with a lot of keyboard.
Boys of Summer.
Maybe Boys of Summer.
No, that was too cool for the Sochers.
The Sochers wanted something.
All these songs are hard to dance to is what I'm getting at.
And, and so the conserves made this big play
and had a vote they called a vote which had never been nobody ever called a vote on the prom theme the prom theme was just decided by socials and you accepted it and everybody accepted it okay in this case the conserves are like no for a vote we're gonna have a vote and they and the conserves and i have to i have to acknowledge that i was not i was not unaffiliated with the conserves yeah uh the conserves
No, the conserves got their choice, which was, um, whatever.
Love me do.
And the socials were extremely dismayed way more dismayed than this.
If the conservatives had lost the vote, they would have no problem.
Shrugged it off.
No problem.
Yeah.
We're used to losing, but the socials were like, you have violated the terms of all of society.
This is like the whole thing with Congress trying to stop the filibuster where you're like, oh, yeah, well, wait till we get no filibuster and see what happens.
Yeah, that's right.
You don't want to you don't want to set that in motion.
But what the conserves forgot is that conserves want nothing to do with planning a prom.
That's where the socias excel.
And so the socias were like, OK, great.
Love me do.
and they planned the prom that they wanted with whatever it was undersea theme or whatever it was supposed to be peacocks on a mountain they put all the streamers up they chose everything about it they hired the dj and they said to the dj we want you to play love me do like fourth song of the night
And then for the couple's dance, for the king and queen dance or whatever, we want you to play orchestral maneuvers in the dark or whatever their theme was.
And they just did the perfect social thing, which was like, okay, fine.
You know, that's what Gramsci calls hegemony.
That's what it is.
Not right there.
That's cultural hegemony you're living through.
That's right.
That's right.
They social to the prom even more social.
God fucking damn it.
and i was i'm just standing there you know i'm like whatever man under the seat you weren't you and your date were both if memory serves wearing a fuzzy striped fuzzy matching striped outfits right yeah i think that might have been a different prom now that i think about it i went to a few proms not because i wanted to go to a prom believe me interesting it was just that you know the girls they want something to lean up this show's good for you i think changing their shoes yeah i think it really it helps you see the you that you are in a lot of this stuff
my mom just dropped a big envelope off of photographs of me in high school and college and i was so awful looking that there's just no well just the worst like terrible hair terrible i think if you'd gotten your eyebrows colored it would have helped a lot i don't there's no if you look at it it's like helmet hair 30 pounds of beer weight um every time i went to the optometrist i was like what are your ugliest glasses
And they were like, well, I mean, we've got these in the free bin.
And I'm like, give them.
Speaking of the 1980s, this reminds me of a scene in a Molly Ringwald movie where she's complaining about school.
And her father says, you know, if you send out signals that you don't want to fit in, other people are going to pick up on that.
And then Ducky takes her to the prom and she wears that horrible dress.
That's a terrible dress.
Now, did they dance to OMD?
There's an OMD song in Warner.
Oh, is that 16 Candles?
Is that the one that's got OMD in it?
Which one ends with if you leave?
I feel like there's OMD all over everything.
But, you know, I don't... I mean, it's all one movie to me.
Really?
Yeah, and it's the movie... Seems a little broad.
No, no, no.
Automobile?
I lived it because, you know, Molly and I are the same age exactly.
I mean, Molly and I should have been together from the beginning.
She was in Hollywood.
Because Jane Whedland turned you down, right?
A long time before.
And then Jane Whedland really lost the plot.
She's not interested in me anymore.
If there's somebody in your life who's arriving at home, there's something I discovered last week.
It's fun to say because I was doing the automobile bit.
Because it's a shame we can't talk about how funny that movie is.
But you know what else I said?
A thing you might want to say when somebody arrives home, whoever that is.
Now, if you say it quietly, it's kind of sweet.
But if you say it loud, it's really upsetting.
When somebody gets home, you say, and I'm not going to do the voice.
you know what voice to do i want you to say what's happening hot stuff but say it in the voice yeah but say it loud and it sounds terrible when you say it loud it's so upset see if they just got home and you go what's happening hot stuff in the voice yeah that's kind of sexy that's got a little bit you know of the old continent to it what if i'm hanging upside down from a tree doing what saying oh i see where's grandpa's automobile
But I also love the pairing with the jock girl.
That's a funny bit.
She's on the exercise bike.
That's a funny bit.
But it's not funny anymore.
No, I never thought it was funny.
It never was funny.
That's the other thing.
It never was funny.
Yeah.
No, I mean, that's the reason we can talk about it is because it was never funny.
it was never funny yeah what do you what do you uh and that's what we're that's all we have to say about it though too oh that's all i have to say about it yeah yep yep yep yep highway wrong remember he cuts off his mustache in the video what a terrible period for them that was a great mustache and as soon as he cut it off i wasn't interested in the band what's wrong with you yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah dennis deyoung also famous mustache
Oh, no, Dennis Young.
I was doing J.R.
No, who's the guy?
Who's the other guy?
J.P.
Who's the other guy?
Who's the mirror, mirror guy?
J.P.
Patches?
J.P.
You got Tommy Shaw.
You got Dennis DeYoung.
You got the brothers.
You got the alcoholic brother and the bass player, Chuck.
And the blonde guy.
The blonde guy with the mustache and the long hair.
Yeah.
Who had shoulder.
Remember his big shoulder pads?
Sure.
Of course I do.
How can you miss it?
Well, I want to say his name's J.R., but that can't be right.
J.P.
?
There are plenty of bands where I know every musician in the band, and then there are the bands where I know just the top three musicians.
Dennis DeYoung.
I'm going to try this.
Dennis DeYoung, Chuck Pinoza.
Wow.
Chuck Pinoza.
John Pinoza.
Couldn't have gone there.
Tommy Shaw.
I know you got this.
I know you got this.
You said Tommy Shaw.
You got this.
Do it.
j is it jr what's his name i don't know jp i don't know i don't know you're so you're so ahead in sticks trivia there are listeners there are people listen i bet dennis knows there are listeners to this show who are like totally know all the members of sticks i hope so can you name every member of foreigner uh i think there might be two people named mick yep there's one from england one from america
Correct.
You got Mick Jones.
No, Mick Jones is from the other band.
He's from the one band.
But it sounds just like that.
It's a British name.
Mitch Ryder.
No, hang on.
Mitch Ryder.
You got Mitch Fleetwood.
Mitch Fleetwood.
You got Mac McVie.
Yep.
Mitch Mac.
Mitch Mac.
Mackelson.
You know who I listened to over the weekend is Tusk.
It's a great record.
There's a 13-minute version of Sarah.
It'll curl your hair.
She says, you're the poet in my heart, she says.
I was watching some Fleetwood Mac on the old grade whistle test.
No, it wasn't.
It was the Midnight Express.
No, no, that's good.
I know that's a good performance.
A really good performance.
Oh, man.
They were so good.
What's funny is that Saturday Night Live has been trying to put live music on television for 50 years, and they've never made it sound as good as Midnight Express.
I don't know why.
Look for the one that's the full collection of Steely Dan performances on Midnight Express.
Look for the helpers.
That's what Mr. Rogers says.
He said, is there gas in the car?
And then the guy responds.
He says, yes, there's gas in the car.
Is the water warm?
Is it safe?
I thought we were just going to do bits that are questions.
Can I hit the bell?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.