Ep. 589: "Dress Audience"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Pretty good.
Just starting.
You know, it's pretty early.
Really?
Yeah, just getting going.
Easing into it.
Yeah, slow.
Haven't even had a sip of coffee yet.
It's here.
I've got it sitting here, but I haven't sipped it yet.
Yeah.
Well, I can shuck and jive if you want to sip.
No, no, no.
No, no.
I mean, everything in its time, you know?
So you're not slamming coffee the second you wake up?
Well, as I say- Or is this, I'm sorry, that was probably hurtful.
Is this the second you woke up?
It's very close to it.
It's close to the second I woke up.
That's part of the magic of our show.
Yeah, I suppose it is.
You know, the waves of reality are just- I guess it is.
Just sort of washing over me like, wow, look at that.
Wow.
Woo, look at that.
It's so green.
Yeah.
In the trees.
Yeah.
So, yeah, the coffee, you know, well, let me put it this way.
I have been awake long enough to make a cup of coffee.
Okay.
But not much longer than that.
I'm out here at the office.
Yeah, that's right.
You go down to the office.
You take the train in.
I do.
It's a longer commute than you'd guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Take the train into the city from.
There's probably a more efficient way.
That's the train, but... From where you are, yeah.
Given that my office is closer than the train stop.
Probably.
Probably.
You know, I saw a guy the other day go by me on one of those little one-wheeled... Yeah.
Things.
Like one of those, like an electro unicycle type situation, right?
Yeah, but there's no seat.
You know, he's just like standing on a wheel, on either side of a wheel.
I know exactly what you mean.
I mean, I've heard it called...
In shorthand terms, I've heard it called a unicycle.
Oh, I see.
He's wearing a motorcycle helmet.
Oh, yeah.
Well, these things, I've looked into these.
These things go fast as shit.
Fast as shit.
He's in traffic.
He's hauling ass and no arms.
The man had no arms.
Wait a minute, you mean like he didn't have an obvious gun on his belt?
He had no arms.
He was an arm-less man.
It feels like he may have been in the military and was part of a bomb disposal group, or maybe it was a congenital...
But whatever it was, he was hauling ass through traffic.
And I was like, he has no arms.
You're pretty sure they weren't just tucked in to stay cozy.
Then he went by.
Well, you know, as soon as I said, does he have arms?
Did you try waving at him?
He was very busy.
I would not have distracted him.
He was the fastest vehicle on the road.
Everybody who's driving should be busy.
That's right.
Thank you.
God, that's a great bumper sticker.
If you're driving, you're already busy.
If you have time to read this, you're not busy enough.
But so as he went by, you know, I don't like to stare, but I was gobsmacked.
I stopped and said, and I watched him go by, and I marveled at him.
And I was like, I wouldn't go that fast on that thing if I were in a suit of armor.
And he's like just in his, I don't know what, his Lululemons.
Lululemon.
Yeah.
And he's just hauling.
Asking a 10-year-old boy.
Not an arm in sight.
I watched him until he had gone over the rise.
You know?
Like, wow.
With a kind of quiet admiration?
If there'd been anybody there with me, I would have been noisily affirming him.
Like, yeah!
Yeah.
But you know...
I don't say, yeah, that often.
I probably should have, actually.
Yeah, but I didn't want to distract him.
One problem with yelling at strangers is, I think, just the very fact in America that someone is yelling, you kind of begin with what seems like a negative.
Because when we think about yelling in America, it's usually they say, hey, I'm walking here, or that's my shopping cart.
or whatever and there should be a nice there should be a way that people can know you are celebrating them with that yell but yeah i got a lot to say about these things john can i give you a quick whistle stop tour yeah give me a tour of all the things you have to say okay it's quick um those things i've talked to uh fellow travelers uh-huh in this in the school community you mean you mean marxists
Oh, yeah, the Friends of Dorothy.
I remember one time in particular, I was talking to a guy outside.
I was waiting to visit my friend Todd, and I was outside the ILM offices, and the guy comes by on one of those, and I was like, so what's the deal?
Industrial Light and Magic?
Yeah.
What are you doing outside of the Industrial Light and Magic offices?
I was waiting for my friend Todd.
Oh, I see, I see, I see.
Okay, go on.
Do you know about Todd?
Yeah.
I'm not sure.
I'm going to write it down.
I've got to tell you about Todd.
It's one of those names.
It's a Generation X name.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
The kid across the street was named Todd.
I had a Todd at school.
Yeah, like Witch Jason, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And I said, you know, I've learned from being in the community, you know, in order to differentiate yourself from like the usual grandpa,
And I'm always happy to answer questions.
I always say hello to children.
Children are curious about it.
Sometimes adults like to step on the scoot scoot.
What I have is called a Segway.
It's not the Segway like Job rides on Arrested Development, although it feels that way.
How is it different?
It's a lot smaller.
It doesn't have handlebars.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Your Segway doesn't have handlebars?
Yeah, you want to see what it looks like?
You have one of the old Segways or the new Segways that don't have handlebars?
I'm not really sure how to answer that.
The Segways that you saw announced were that guy wearing double jean.
I sure do remember.
Oh, I remember that day.
Yeah, that was a big day.
I think his name was Dean Craven.
And he's like, remember, this is going to change everything.
Change everything.
That's what Steve Jobs said.
And those ones, you stand up on this real tall thing.
So if you've ever seen like tours, at least here in San Francisco, there's like Segway tours you can go on.
I've seen those.
I've seen those in other places.
They got real big beefy tires.
Sometimes you'll see a mall cop on one of those big ones.
They still make those.
They all have like handlebars and sometimes seats, right?
And three wheels and all that type of thing.
The thing, this is, I am not a lawyer.
But it's my understanding that that is one distinction between the scoots is if you got no handlebars, it's okay to be on the sidewalk.
If you got handlebars, you're not supposed to be on the sidewalk.
Oh, interesting.
I think that's correct, but I don't actually care.
So I just Googled Segway and every single picture, except for the second one, every other picture, somebody's holding on to handlebars.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
They got handlebars, they got Bastix on them.
Yes, right, right, right.
Let me see.
Okay, look up, so Segway, excuse me, S-plus.
Segway, S-plus sign?
Sorry, the English language word for the word PLU.
Oh, I see.
I was going to say dash plus, that's minus plus.
No, that sounds like an Apple product.
Oh, I see what you have.
This thing looks like a little droid that would be a helper droid around the house.
Man, I hate it.
I painted mine.
What'd you paint it?
I painted go away green.
You know that color Disney properties?
Yeah, now you can't see it.
Nobody can see it.
I can barely see it.
Yeah, I have to use GPS to find it.
So why did you choose this one of all days?
Why is today different?
This is my third or fourth one of these.
Oh.
So this all started on Dubai Friday.
It was a dare.
Yes, that's exactly right.
I dare to get you a Segway.
Yeah, yeah.
And this one's got, last I checked, it was like 1,100 miles on it.
That's incredible.
Yeah, it's how I get around.
So anyway, this is, what we're talking about here is a class of scooter.
Segway is a brand name.
It's owned by a company called Ninebot.
But the main thing to know is that it's what is called a self-balancing scooter.
I see.
So like you don't,
I wouldn't say you don't need arms because I'm not in a position to say, but you don't go like, look, see me with my arms going, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You see me doing that?
Like if I was stepping, like if I was the guy walking between the towers, never forget, I'd be going, whoa, whoa, whoa.
You know, you don't do that.
The most, here's the single most difficult, I'm gonna tell you, everything I know about scooters is gonna take three minutes.
That's not true.
It's a self-balancing scooter.
So the, which means as soon as you step on it, it does the balancing for you.
And then you steer by just kind of inclining your body a little bit.
You don't actually not, in some of these pictures, they show these noobs like grasping the thing with their knees.
You super don't want to do that.
You actually want your feet as far apart as possible, not touching the dingus.
But the self-balancing part is what makes it great and why you can get such a sense of confidence from this.
Here's my one tip.
The thing I say to everybody, I say, look, you can step on this and try it if you want.
But I'm going to tell you the one thing you got to know.
It's a self-balancing scooter.
If you try to balance, quote unquote, on a self-balancing scooter, you're going to fall on your ass.
Oh, interesting.
So how do you step onto it?
You step onto it the same way you would step onto a step.
Step onto it like a step.
And it's very confusing for people.
Yes.
Step like a step.
That should be their motto.
Step like a step.
No, it's not their motto.
Because it's a wheel.
It's wheels.
That's just how it works.
I love mine.
I go everywhere on it.
So here's some other things.
These are, I think for the price, you end up getting a lot of value out of them personally.
Can you fall off of them?
Let's say you step on like a step.
Oh, you can fall off.
Oh, you can go ass over tea kettle.
I've fallen off mine probably a total of five times.
And hard?
Ever fall off of it hard?
Oh, hell yeah.
Oh, ouch.
Yeah.
I should wear a helmet.
Shut up.
I don't want to hear about it.
Let me ask you this.
Yes, you there.
If you get off of it and you're like, I just want to walk for like 100 feet, can you go...
Hey, Segway, follow me.
And will it follow behind you like a dog?
That's so interesting that you would ask that.
The previous model of this that I had, which isn't quite as performative, was really great for something that I really miss with this one.
The previous models I had, it's got this little stick that you can telescope out of the top.
That you just grab the end of the stick and you can like walk around the grocery store or whatever.
This doesn't have that, so you got to be kind of stooped over if you want to walk it.
Yes, you can walk it.
Now, B, this particular one, this is fascinating, by the way.
This 9xS Plus, it has a remote.
It has what's called follow mode.
And it doesn't work very well.
And it's a terrible idea.
Because let's say you start walking down an incline.
Well, I mean, it'll try to keep a certain space away from you, but it's really, it's more a cute idea.
Let me get past all this.
I'll get to the good part.
And this thing goes, you can hack it, but I haven't.
It tops out at around 10 miles per hour.
How fast does a person walk?
I don't know.
I think I could outrun most elderly people.
um and and elderly dogs sure but what is that what do you walk say five six miles an hour something like that i don't know i thought it was i thought the average person walked four miles an hour so if you're going 10 um if you're going 10 that's pretty hot well it is it is and i i am i try really hard to not only be go way beyond
being you know nice and nice and kind in all the ways i try to always be but like i go way out of my way not to like be intimidating sneak up on people but the thing is it's my neighborhood sure sure if you're sneaking up on somebody do you start waving your arms if you're like that's not funny oh i'm sorry not everybody must be nice
Um, I, uh, it's our neighborhood.
So of course everybody, single person walking down the side owns the entire fucking sidewalk.
Nobody knows to move to the right.
Sure.
It's, it's just the neighborhood and that's all I'm going to say about that.
But I try really hard not to freak people out.
Most, a lot of people are on their phones.
People are just listening to music.
They're staring ahead.
They don't have situational awareness.
I get situational awareness out the ass.
I'm constantly looking behind me to my left, to my right.
Behind me.
You and I both have the same exact kind of different ADHD.
I'm not looking at where you are.
I'm looking at where I'm going.
You're looking into the future.
You're looking into the past.
You're looking into other dimensions.
This is why my advice from the document is if you want to see how to navigate through a busy crowd of people, don't look at your feet.
Don't look at the bodies in front of you.
Look above the heads of the people in front of you.
The same way that in traffic, right, you're not looking at- That's how you're going to see a dragon.
If there's a dragon, nobody else is going to see it.
There could be a dragon on the road.
Yeah, nobody else is going to see it until it's too late.
Yeah.
By that time, I'm already out of there.
Okay.
So I try really hard to do that.
Five miles an hour.
Okay.
Contrast.
But now let me ask you this.
I'm just typing.
Go ahead.
Is there anyone else in your neighborhood that has one?
And if there isn't, does that mean that everybody in the neighborhood knows you as Segway guy?
I've thought about this.
I have to imagine I'm absolutely the scooter guy.
You know, you got guys in a neighborhood or gals or whatever, but you know.
Look, you got a guy.
Remember the guy at the Shumai place?
Never washed his hands.
Never washed his hands.
He had pigeons in the kitchen.
There's this guy at the liquor store.
Remember that liquor store I took photos of you in front of?
He was called the little man.
We had a guy here back in the 90s that used to ride around with a broadsword on his back, and everybody called him Conan.
Or Conan.
Conan.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You tend to get in that canning.
You get a name like that.
So, yeah, I'm probably marked.
But, you know, I think I'm a little ahead of the curve.
I think more people are going to be doing stuff like this.
People already ride bikes, you know.
But anyhow.
So why do people have handlebars on them if they don't need handlebars on them?
I think the handlebars, as with the handlebars, especially on a kick scooter, do provide extra balance.
And in the case of a kick scooter, it's also how you steer.
Personally, I feel much less confident on a kick scooter because it's so easy to accidentally steer just the teeniest bit too much.
Do you know what I mean?
You think about that little swivel, like you're on a scooter, like a kid's scooter, and you turn two or three degrees with the handlebars.
It's real easy for you to go ask for a key kettle.
Yeah, no, I don't like that idea.
So let me just finish this one part, and then I'll entertain any questions.
I remember hearing a very long time ago, probably in driver's ed class,
So take it with a grain of salt.
This is probably 1984.
It was taught by a PE teacher.
It was taught by the football coach, who was about three bucks.
This guy was probably $3.25.
He used to eat egg McMuffins off of his stomach as a table.
That was Coach Lofton, and I'd be happy to find a picture.
Maybe that'll be show art, Coach Lofton.
I remember hearing in driver's ed that one of the problems with a motorcycle is there's a lot of physics problems going on.
One of them is the amount of motorcycle that is touching the road.
is much smaller than the amount of automobile that's touching the road.
If you think about the surface area of four tires of that size versus two tires, it's not a way of saying one's better or worse than another, but it's something to definitely keep in mind is how much...
you know, how much tire or touching road you get.
So like with mine, like it doesn't really go, you can screw yourself up, but generally it's, it's, it's pretty safe.
You just got to be careful of like uneven pavement and stuff.
Now with that unicycle,
um well the first thing i've been told on two separate occasions by both members of my family i am absolutely not allowed to get one of those that that is they put up with ones one of the unicycle ones that is officially a bridge too far for my son and my wife because it's real dorky but it's also they go really really fast and i kind of want one
Yeah, super fast.
Yeah.
I was just telling you the story about this guy with no arms.
I was hauling ass.
Well, yeah, yeah.
He was in the road.
Do you think he served?
See, this is the thing.
He was in Iraq, probably.
Well, so here's the thing.
I buried the lead.
I was in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Oh, I would love to go there.
I was in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Yes, a lot of bands from there.
Yeah, there's a lot of bands from that triangle.
There are bands that are down there.
And so the crazy thing, I was in Atlanta.
Hotlanta, I thought.
Talk about a long commute, John.
Woof.
And I was in it.
Were you over there on Peachtree or were you over there on Peachtree?
I did.
I was on Peachtree for a little bit.
Were you on Peachtree?
Okay.
I was on Peachtree on a Friday night.
That intersects with Peachtree over near Peachtree, right?
Things were really jamming.
I was downtown Atlanta in the middle of the night.
It was jamming.
But when I was at the airport, you know, I was flying Delta, not because they've done me any favors recently, but I was there, I was.
Because that's where they are.
You want to go to Atlanta.
The gate agent said, all right, we're going to start pre-boarding anybody that needs any help, et cetera, et cetera.
And any current active duty service members or veterans.
Okay.
And I have never seen...
A longer line of people get up at that invitation in my life.
I bet you that's 60% stolen of valor.
I don't know, because a lot of them had backpacks.
So that's the thing.
The gate agent was like, you must have ID.
No, you know what I mean.
Something that shows your active duty or retired.
or then they all had to they all had to flash it a lot of them had uh back acts that had uh american flags and their uh their their name tag from their uniform which is which is a style to wear it that way and it was amazing like if you when they call that when they say active duty service members and you know seattle's a major military town a
Uh, but you know, you get five people up there.
Yeah.
There were 40 people getting on the plane.
Jiminy.
From Atlanta to Raleigh.
And I was like, see, it's the South, the South disproportionate number of people down here have been in the, in the service.
Yeah.
So when I saw this guy with no arms hauling ass in the middle of the street, I was like, I bet that's an Iraq war wound.
See, I was hoping you'd say he was riding that around the airport.
Riding around the airport, that's too much.
It would be incredible.
It would be incredibly fun until you got tackled by security.
Here's the thing.
I'm going to just say this quickly to you, and then we're going to move straight past it, but there's a thing that I am far from the first person to ever say this.
I can't even tell you how many people I've heard say this before me, but in terms of people with disabilities,
Accessibility is good for everyone, and it harms no one.
Like, if you don't need a ramp today, well, somebody would benefit from that ramp, and it might be somebody you love, and it might be you.
Like, after your bunion surgery, you might need a ramp, or whatever, right?
And I think...
things like my segway i would see that sort of as a hybrid i can go let's put it this way i'm 50 something almost 60 and like i can go a lot further a lot more efficiently and safely than i can on foot it doesn't mean i don't walk but i mean in that case it is somewhere between standard white guy transportation and an assistive device
There's a lot of people, like people who get around on a rascal or whatever.
And it's like, I feel like in the future, I hope it'll become more okay for people to pick the way they get around that's not an SUV.
And there's an element of accessibility to that, I think.
So I don't want to go on about it, but I think, you know, when we there's there's just another kind of I'm not going to use the P word, but there's a lot of people who look down their nose at anything.
It's not the thing that they're used to and think, oh, that hokey thing is screwing up the city.
And it's like, well, not everybody has two cars and two garages.
And those green scooters are screwing up the city.
Let's be honest.
The green ones, the pusher ones.
We didn't stop using email when spam came along, even though it was a huge problem.
No, I'm just, I don't mean to be cute about it.
It's because they're laying down across the sidewalk.
Yeah, but that's just shitty behavior.
That's shitty behavior, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, like, if you give people the opportunity to be shitty, they'll be shitty.
And then people get mad about it.
Then you get a bad rap.
And it's like, oh, luckily all these cars are awesome.
So anyway, I just wanted to say, good for him.
Oh, for sure.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, he's still my hero even now.
It's only been a day.
Man, that's got to be a tough road to hoe, you know?
Can you even imagine?
Yeah, but it seems like you're definitely not, as you're hauling ass through traffic, you have eliminated the worry about like, oh, am I the guy that's like waving his arms?
I suppose.
You know?
Yeah.
He looked like a new kind of creature.
He looked like a future being.
Oh, it's like David Bowie said in that song, you got to make way for the homo superior.
Homo superior.
You know that song?
Yeah.
I'm not talking about.
Same thing.
He's talking about the X-Men, I think.
But I think it also goes for people with wheels.
Yeah, that's what it looked like.
He looked like a being with wheels.
Transhumanism, they call it.
That had previously not existed.
Yes.
And had done away with, evolutionarily, had done away with what had become superfluous.
Which was, it's kind of a Silver Surfer thing, if you want to get down to it.
Like, what does the Silver Surfer need arms for?
I mean, I guess he does other things besides surf.
Yeah, Charlie don't surf.
So, anyway, it was very intriguing.
How do you know about Silver Surfer?
Well, and that's the thing about being down in the South.
It's a different place.
Yeah, Silver Surfer's a girl now.
Is that right?
There's a new Silver Surfer and it's a girl.
Yeah, it's that pretty actress from the Anna Delvey TV series.
Oh, they're including Silver Surfer in the comic books?
Oh, in the movies.
Yeah, yeah.
Because I always found the Silver Surfer.
I haven't kept up with Silver Surfer since the Mike Allred run, but it used to be, time was, Silver Surfer was the herald of Galactus.
So Silver Surfer's job, in order for his family on his planet to be kept alive, he had to go out and hunt for new planets that Galactus could eat.
So he was kind of pressed into service with that.
Yeah.
I always found the Silver Surfer comics to be completely incomprehensible.
A lot of text, a lot of him surfing through the stars.
Yeah.
And it was like a very philosophical.
Yeah.
It was from that time.
It's from that late 60s time when you were getting all that wackadoo Jim Steranko stuff with.
Anyway, enough about comics.
I've talked about scooters.
I've talked about comics.
There's more of my life in this episode than anyone is comfortable with.
Than those two things.
Yeah, that's right.
My daughter last night, she texted me and said, why didn't you tell me there was something called Comic Con?
Who did?
And I said, my daughter.
Oh, really?
I've been keeping it from you.
I don't want you to know about it.
You know, Syracuse never told his kids about the prequels.
oh wow really yeah he's like they're there they're on they're over there they're in the house if they find them we'll talk about it but i'm not going to introduce them to it and i think that's kind of what you do for her own good in some ways right well see that's the thing i never i never even told her that anime existed i never told her so many things i didn't tell her about but i definitely didn't tell her about comic-con and now she's found out on her own which i knew it would happen
And she said, you've been keeping Comic-Con from me.
And then I sent a picture of myself at San Diego Comic-Con talking to a woman in a Catwoman suit that this woman had stitched together herself.
She might have been shot from the rear.
Yeah, that's right.
That's correct.
And I did it as a way of...
I did it as a way of scandalizing her because she really, my daughter does not like it when she detects her mother flirting or when she hears or sees any evidence that I have ever loved another woman.
And I'm talking to this cat woman and there's a long pause.
It's hard.
You're both so charismatic.
I know.
I don't even think of it as flirting.
It's just the normal way I talk.
That's the problem with you people.
But there's a long pause.
And then she texts back and she said, even that photo doesn't dissuade me from wanting to go to Comic-Con.
Hell yeah.
And I said, all right.
You can do regional stuff that's not going to be as much of a big problem.
So that's what I said.
Seattle Comic-Con is right around her birthday.
And I said, all right, we'll go to Comic-Con next year.
And, you know, there's any day now she's going to be like, I don't want to go to Comic-Con with you, nerd.
Yeah.
But for now, she was satisfied with that.
And, of course, I'm going to have to take some of her little friends that have green hair.
You're probably going to have to drive all over town to pick them up, too.
Oy.
And then take them there and be like, oh, there's so many things here that I don't even want you to know about.
But go on.
Go ahead.
You mean like sexy stuff?
No, just like...
just the many many universes that are represented by booths of people trying to get you interested in the thing that they made which a lot of the you know a lot of the side booths at those things where people are like i made this little thing they're great if you stop and talk to them right like i'll draw your mom as a furry for five dollars yeah it's the billion billion trillion dollar companies that are like ha ha where let us get inside your mind with this flashy thing
But, you know, you have to trust her.
She's old enough now.
She can make her own choices.
I know what you mean now.
She's going to come home, and she's going to be like, have you ever seen Akira?
And I'm like, yes, I have seen Akira.
But it's not going to be Akira.
It's going to be something else, some weeaboo shit.
You should warn her about motorcycles, though, about the amount of motorcycle touching the road.
It's only a little bit compared to a car, even less if you're on some zippy-dippy scooter.
Meep, meep.
So, long story short, yeah.
Oh, so I went to, I was down in the south.
I don't know if I told you.
What brought you to the south, John?
Well, it's a funny thing.
Last week after our show, and by after our show, I mean a couple of days after our show, Wednesday...
uh the phone rang new new york uh new york area code i did what anybody would do which is ignore it but you know apple's got that new thing where they transcribe the voicemails right right and so right away voicemail i looked at it and uh and the voicemail said uh hi i'm dan carlin's manager would you call me back please
Hardcore history, Dan Carlin?
Hardcore history, Dan Carlin.
Was it like a six-hour-long voicemail?
No, no, no.
It wasn't Dan Carlin.
It was Dan Carlin's agent.
You get the joke, though, right?
Yeah, I do.
I do.
It could have been a 16-hour.
Was it like a six-hour-long voicemail?
Yeah, it was.
It was amazing.
It was about Allegheny.
And it begins like this.
I'm Dan Carlin's agent.
The triberchets had been set up around the perimeter of the... I called her back.
I think I've heard him come.
On some occasions.
No, no, when he really gets talking about siege technologies.
Yeah, he likes that stuff.
Oh, I love the siege technology stuff.
But so she said, Dan's doing these big shows.
He's doing a couple of live shows this year.
Wow.
And he's doing this one in Atlanta at the Atlanta Symphony Hall.
And he's doing one in Raleigh at the Raleigh Symphony Hall, whatever it's called.
Would you be willing to fly down and interview Dan Carlin at his big shows?
Oh, wow.
Because we haven't.
Are you guys acquainted?
I forget.
Yeah, well, we did a show once on the similar grounds.
Oh, that's right.
You said that, and I thought you were talking about the guy from Community.
That was the confusion.
Yeah, that's right.
And sometimes I get it.
You know, when I was introducing him the other night.
There's too many Dans.
As I pointed at him, he was on the side of the stage and I said, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome.
And I was like, don't say it wrong.
There's a couple of different things you could say right now.
It's not George Carlin.
Take it slow.
It's not Dan Carson.
So it took me a second, but I got it right.
but yeah i you know when i met him up here uh we got along great he's a little bit he's your age right and um and so they apparently had i think what happens is he he books these shows and then somebody locally is like oh well we'll get the professor of history kind of like maybe like when i interviewed john hodgman it's like that but this was one where they hit like a friendly a friendly knowledgeable person
That's the idea, right?
A friendly, knowledgeable person.
But the problem is because of his history thing, they tend to get people that don't have a lot of stage time that's outside of like a teaching seminar.
And Dan doesn't have a lot of stage time.
And so I don't know.
You know what it's like when you get around people that are on stage that haven't had a lot of stage time?
It can be.
I mean, like, I think I do know what you mean.
And it's one of those things where...
I watch a lot.
I have watched in my dotage, watched a ton of panel interviews, whether that's about, I know you're not a fan, but like I've watched the Paley interviews about, I've done the park, watched all the Parks and Rec panels.
I just watched one not too long ago about what we do in the shadows.
And you see a lot of them at something like Comic-Con where they got people lined up in two rows and it's like, it's the cast of Severance.
Those kind of as good as the people being interviewed might be, they do kind of stand or fall on how much you can kind of get with the interviewer.
If it's somebody who's a little bit too e-entertainment, you know what I mean?
Or you can bring in somebody like Shingy.
I don't know who that is.
Yeah, you do.
Yes.
Do you remember the digital evangelist guy?
Oh, the digital evangelist guy.
The guy who interviewed us at that thing?
Yeah, I do.
What was his name?
What was his title?
Wasn't he like the digital prophet?
Digital prophet?
Was that it?
Digital prophet.
Shingy, yeah.
He had hair like that.
It's like Mike Peters from The Alarm.
I'd forgotten him.
you forgot well so you forgot shingy okay just you know my mind now is is uh only retaining information that's directly applicable yeah right right right pick up times and from swim swimming and stuff yeah that's it so i said uh well i can't my daughter's got to play on friday and then i had this lawn bowling date on saturday yeah and she said well we're kind of in a bind
And I'm like, really?
Between here and Atlanta, there's no one?
You know, that's a long way to come to Seattle and Atlanta.
And I said, well, let me see what I can do.
So I called my kids a theater director.
And I said, what are the chances that I can come in and watch the dress rehearsal?
And the theater director said, well, sure.
Nobody ever does it, but sure, come watch the dress rehearsal.
And so I was like, okay.
Was that cool?
Did you check it out with her?
Was it cool?
Well, I've done it before.
Okay.
I've gone to dress rehearsals when I couldn't make the show because I was traveling.
That's smart.
Yeah, you go see the whole thing, and it feels special to them, too.
Hell yes.
It adds just a little bit more of the, it's a dress rehearsal, and this is a dress audience.
Yeah.
And you know, daddy, it feels always a little bit like behind the curtain on stuff like theater and performance.
Like, you know, it's very much a dad thing to do for, in my case, to go to the dress rehearsal.
Cause I, they believe, she believes that I can handle mistakes that happen on stage where maybe other people, normies would be freaked out if somebody dropped a prop or something, but dad can handle it cause he's been in the show.
So it's ha it's happened a couple of times.
So I, I, I squared that away and then I called the lawn, my blonde bowling friends and I was like, I can't make a lawn bowling.
And they were like, oh, but that was as long as that lasted.
And I called her back and I said, yeah, I'll, I'll do it.
I'll do it.
And because it's show business, their show, it's a, it's a management's.
So their show business.
And so we had to, we had to do the, you know, this is as well as anybody, the perfunctory kind of like, oh, well, here's the amount, but we can't pay for flights and hotels.
And I said, well, then what you're, then the amount that you're saying isn't the amount.
Uh, what you're the amount is just half the amount.
Cause I'm going to have to pay for flights and hotels.
So I can't do that.
And then she hung up and then called me back and she was like, okay, we can pay, uh, flights and hotels, but the money, I got it wrong.
How much the money was.
And I was like, well, that's the same as what you were saying before.
Now it's less money, but you're paying for flights and hotels.
So it's no different.
She was like, you're right.
You know, I do this a lot where I'll contact somebody, like, for example, if I'm having problems with my toilet or, you know, various drainage issues, I'll call a plumber and say, I need you to come out today, and I'll pay for the parts, but I won't pay for the labor.
And they're usually pretty cool about it.
And then I call them back and go, well, you know, I can move a little bit on that, but let's not go crazy.
Exactly like it is.
Yeah.
It's show business.
Not show friends.
It's not show friends.
But, you know, I've been in it a long enough time that I know that at some level she's trying to not spend all the money.
But at another level, money is completely fake to those people.
They don't even know what money is.
They're probably not even throwing out the check.
When they go home, money becomes real to them personally.
Oh, don't think I don't right before I stopped doing that for a living.
Don't think I haven't said that more than once.
Hey, hey, is it cool if I ask you to waive your payment for the entire time that you're talking to me about me waiving my payment?
Is that how it works with you?
Do you are you ever contacted by people?
Who have better things to do.
And they just say, hey, why don't you take three days to go do a thing?
But I'm not going to pay you.
We'll pay you for one hour of it.
Yeah.
Let's see how it goes.
So eventually she called me back and she said, yeah, okay.
All the things that you said.
Cool.
And I've been doing it so long that I know, that I resist saying at that point,
I knew it was always going to be this.
And so all of this dance is funny, right?
So last minute.
If you have the money.
You know what I'm saying, dude?
It's not like they're saying in two years, do you want to do this?
They're asking you to like, I'm sorry.
I get my dander up a little bit with stuff like this.
And it's not even, to say it's not about the money is not factual.
It's that, like, I'm really, this goes back to our original backyard pilot.
Like, hey, could you do me a favor and not act like you're doing me a favor?
Could you do me a favor and act like you're not doing me a favor by asking?
Well, that's the thing, right?
They knew that.
It's not like they were going to call Joel McHale if I said no.
They'd say it's good exposure.
Yeah, and they can't do that to me, you know?
No.
But here's the thing.
This is the first time that big show business has called me since being dead.
Oh, okay.
This is the first show that anybody's offered me outside of the greater Seattle area.
I get it.
And in the greater Seattle area, I'm, you know, like I was never, there was never a problem here, right?
People, but I was nervous.
No, I get it.
Took two years before I said yes to things.
But so I'm thinking that, you know, this is, she's calling from a big talent agency.
The promoter is a big promoter.
They're nationwide, international, big agencies.
And they're like, Hey, can you please do this?
We'll, we'll turn, we'll back up the money truck.
And I'm like, yes, I will.
Just because.
Just because I'd like to start doing this again.
Sure.
And I'd like you guys to remember what a badass I am at it.
And so I said yes, and they ended up ponying up.
And so it requires that I get up at fucking five o'clock in the morning.
Mm-hmm.
Because I got a flat out.
Hot Lana, as you like to say.
Mm-hmm.
And I got to the airport, of course, and Delta had canceled my flight and they had rescheduled it for the same time, a 6 a.m.
flight.
They had rescheduled it as a 6 p.m.
flight and not sent any messages to that effect.
So I opened up my app.
It said six o'clock flight in the app.
And I get through security and I'm down to the gate and the gate is abandoned.
The lights are out.
There's tumbleweeds.
And I'm like, what the hell is going on here?
Go over to the Delta lounge.
Hey, what's going on here?
Oh, there was some kind of storm down in Atlanta and Delta canceled every single flight to Atlanta from every West Coast city.
And now all of the next flights to Atlanta are double booked.
There's 200 people lined up to get on the flights.
And some nice woman spent 45 minutes going tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick on her computer.
And she's like, well, I could get you to Boise and then Salt Lake.
You ever think about just how much, how many person hours every day goes into someone going tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick trying to fix some dumb bullshit?
And it felt like after a while, why is there not some system built into your Delta thing where you're like, I got to get this person from here to there?
I think it's like a UK comedy routine where it's like, there's no way you need to click that many keys to do what you're doing.
Yeah.
You just, you basically just wrote the introduction for a book.
There's no way that that's like trying to get me a flight to Raleigh.
Put my name in it and then Atlanta or Hotlanta, as you like to say.
That's what I like to say.
Put Hotlanta in it at the other end and then say I'm in Seattle and then let the, I mean, kayak can do it, right?
Anybody, you could go, you could go off to hotels.com and they would do it.
So why can't Delta do it?
And she's like, well, if I wrote you through Tucson and then went to Austin, but then all the flights are sold out from Austin.
Anyway, I called the, I called the big shop manager.
the big shot international management company oh i was like hey look this is all foobar and she said hold on and like three minutes later she said i booked you uh on a non-stop alaska flight uh and i had to put you in first class
Oh, I like both of those.
Just the Alaska alone would be nice.
Right.
And the nonstop.
It's such a nicer airline.
The Delta lady was like, well, if I sent you to Boise and then to Tucson them.
And it was just like, oh, there was a nonstop Delta.
And the thing is, the Delta lady was like, I'm on Alaska.
I'm trying to book you over in Alaska, but there are no seats available.
So apparently the system doesn't allow Delta to see all the seats available, just the ones that it allows them to see.
So anyway, I'm over on Alaska.
I fly over there in first class.
And first class really is, you know, I have to say, on a long flight, it's nice.
It's better.
It is.
And yeah, that was the first time.
I think that was one of the first times I ever flew first class was on Alaska.
And it was really nice.
Oh, it's nice.
They treat you well.
There's food.
Well, Delta feels like you're on a bus.
Yeah.
Anyway, so I get there.
Dan and I really, we get along better.
Oh, that's wonderful.
Yeah, now I've met him twice, and so it's like we're old friends.
And, you know, he reminds me actually a lot of you.
Like, he's got a kind of... He would have no way of knowing who I am, but if he's out there, hi.
Hi, Dan Carlin.
I enjoy your work.
I keep needing to pay for it, but I haven't yet.
He has a kind of intensity.
He likes to be on stage, I think, and he likes to...
He likes to, um, he's a good communicator.
Yeah.
And he thinks on his feet, like, you know, part of my game was, wait a minute, why am I throwing softballs at this guy?
So I started throwing a little bit faster pitches at him.
And, um, yeah.
And you can see on his face as I'm asking a question in front of 900 people that his like years are turning pretty fast.
And I'm like, how do you like them apples?
And then he goes.
He's got an answer.
And he's somebody that can think while he's talking, which is a good skill.
Anyway, we had a great show.
Walked around Atlanta in the middle of the night, which is a hopping town on a Friday night.
That's so exciting.
I always try and get a hotel that's in the town, if the venue's in the town, so that after the show, I can clear my head and go walk through the streets.
Then flew to Raleigh.
Same thing.
Good show.
I talked to some people.
There was a young couple that chased me down on the street as I was walking along.
They were like, hey, we were just at the show.
Can we talk?
And they were millenniums.
And they wanted to talk about the world, which millennials do.
And we had a very nice, you know, we stayed and had a little 15-minute long conversation.
And then I did, do you remember tweet-ups?
You're the king of the tweet-ups.
The first tweet-up I ever did, I think, was with you and those bozos.
And I was like, hey, let's have a tweet-up.
I hear about these things.
And everybody groaned.
oh god come on why are you doing that and then i was like like you say tweeting up all the time hey i'm in this town like come meet me there's always five to fifteen people that are like shit i'll take 20 minutes off of work and go see this ding-a-ling yeah so i've last minute you know hey meet me in my hotel lobby in raleigh
i get five great people no kidding yeah a couple that i've you know known on the internet for a long time and uh and again like fascinating sort of bunch of different jobs there was uh there was you know the the sort of tech thing but there was uh but there was a guy that that uh tints car windows
And there was another man that works on... That's gotta be huge there.
Yep.
That's right.
There was another man that works on gas turbine engines.
And, you know, and just like a... What about Laura from Superchunk?
Did she show up?
No, she didn't.
But, you know, but she texted me later and she was like, if you'd given me more notice... Yeah, right, right, right.
There were a lot of those.
A lot of those.
Like, I could have used more than, you know... See, I'm less popular than you, so I always kind of liked the fact that when I did that, it would be two or three people.
Cause then you can, you know, I can really hang with two or three people.
But the thing about having 15 people is that everybody goes around and introduces themselves.
It's kind of like a meeting.
Yeah.
But then they all meet each other because I think every, every podcast listener feels a little bit in a bubble with you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, well you get, you get, you're going to find affinity groups.
Right?
But there's always somebody from the local college.
There's always somebody that has a job nobody expected.
There's always somebody that does blue collar work and all the tech people all turn and look at them like, whoa, what?
You actually touch things as part of your job?
Um, so it's, it's, it's cool.
Cause they get to know each other.
You know, there's, there's inevitably like enough women that the guys are like, there are women here.
You know, there's like, it's a, it's a funny little dynamic you see when you do tweet ups more than, you know, than a few times.
It's like, you see this kind of repeat.
There's always somebody that's young and the olds are like young people listen.
I used to be really happy when it would be somebody who's there with their parent.
Oh, see, that's sweet.
That's sweet.
And then a couple of the people were like, my kid is going to be so jealous.
But so we had a great little tweet up.
And then a couple of the people were like, let us give you a ride to the airport.
So the whole thing- And you weren't abandoned in a ditch.
No.
No.
Well, you know, I'm like- Yeah.
Nobody's gonna- Oh, the windows are tinted so they couldn't see.
The windows are tinted.
Nobody could see in.
They're like, all right, buddy.
But everybody knows I don't have any money, you know?
No.
So I left on Friday.
I got back on Sunday.
It felt like I'd been gone a week and a half.
Nobody here even noticed I was gone.
And I was like, this is, I love this.
This was a very successful, you know, some of the stuff was, it took a year off my life, but, you know, I like Dan Carlin.
That's a nice feeling.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We had good conversation.
I think everybody at the show was happy they went.
And I, you know, I like being in show, I like it being a show people.
Yeah.
Yeah.
and i've been out of it you know i was out of it because i was because i was shy of it i was scared people were gonna yell at me
And then I've been getting back into it up here in Seattle, but I had started and done a ton of shows, but I started to feel like, oh, this is Seattle.
Like they're just being nice or, you know, everybody in Seattle knows who I am and they love me and stuff, but I still, I'm not, I haven't been to New York Merlin since the, before the pandemic.
And I used to go five times a year.
Yeah.
Yeah.
For 20 years I went and now it's like, I still haven't been there in however long.
Cause you don't have as much reason to go there.
I don't have any reason because I'm not doing any shows.
You could still go on your own.
Well, I could.
I could.
I could go and walk around.
That's what you're saying, though.
It's nice.
You're back in the mix.
You feel like you're a little bit in the mix.
That's nice.
A little bit.
A little bit.
You just need one.
And then, you know, and everybody there, his management and everybody, they were like, hey, you did a great job.
Would you ever consider this again?
And I said, yes, I would.
I sure would do that.
I'd fly somewhere.
And, you know, Dan's over their shoulder like, I don't want to do this that much.
You know, I'm only going to do a couple of more shows because this is not as good as being at home.
Yeah.
And I was like, I know that feeling.
I do.
He said to me after the second show, he was like, God, two shows in a row.
It's too much.
Yeah, not everybody's cut out for it.
I said, I once played 90 shows in 100 days.
And he was like, I don't even know what those words mean.
I was like, I know.
I know you don't.
Tiny man, like, yeah, like watching that Billy Joel special and like thinking about like just the number of shows that they would do.
in 70 like 77 78 you know and still needing to record an album ditto i was listening to a podcast about um really good episode about the rolling stones in the mid 60s to the late 60s and it's just like i don't know how you come out of that on the other side anything they're playing a show and then the next day they go into muscle shoals and lay down yeah right and then they're playing a show the day after that i think i get a little weird too
Yeah, for sure.
And you'd probably, Merlin, honestly, you'd probably get addicted to heroin and get blood transfusions.
It's perfectly normal.
I was thinking about that this morning.
Is that right?
Well, kind of, yeah.
I mean, no, honestly, I was thinking about how, left to my own devices, when I can make everything exactly the way I want, I'm still not all that happy.
And like, if I were compelled to be like, cause anytime I've had any measure of what people consider success, I end up unhappy.
So, you know, I, I'm trying to learn.
I've seen that happen.
Well, not always.
It's just that I'm, I'm a pill about certain kinds of things.
And I, you know, and I'm not, I'm, I'm resistant to, um,
change some things about myself when it probably could benefit me.
Because I can be a go-along-get-along guy, but I don't feel at my happiest when I'm waiting for them to find a rental car for me.
Oh, sure.
I mean, that's the thing.
We talk about travel.
It's like blah, blah.
And you're like, well, yeah, but it's more than going to like, you know, the Duomo.
It's just in all the, all the other horse shit.
And like, everybody's mad because they saw a roach and it's like, ah, there's just, I've, I've said, this is an ongoing topic on Reconcilable Differences is how badly I handle what John calls vacations and how he's, he just, I don't know.
I'm not going to.
I know what a reservation is, sir.
Well, I don't think you do.
Well, they have to hold the reservation.
That's the most important.
I don't think you do.
Dan Carlin reminded me of you in that way, too, in which he has a lot of personal integrity.
And so he's always looking at situations.
Also, he's unsuccessful.
He's pretty successful.
I know.
But he said at both nights, he was like, I just want the people in the audience to feel like this was worth going to.
Yeah.
And when they left, they didn't feel cheated.
And I was like, Dan, you talked to them for two hours about fucking trebuchets.
They don't feel cheated.
Right.
They feel this was this was a great show.
This was really good.
And he's like, are you sure?
Are you sure?
And I'm like, I know for a fact I've been to a lot of shows.
um i'm i'm asking this advisedly for opsec reasons i don't know if it is known where he's generally based do you know if it's able if you're able to say where he's based yeah so he grew up in la and he was part of the punk culture there in the late shut up yeah so he was like wait a minute so he's about my age he's 59
So he was going to like Orange County, like Circle Jerks, Flipper shows and stuff like that.
All of those shows.
And he's a super big Dead Kennedys fan, you know, and he's just like... Chemical warfare, chemical warfare, chemical warfare, warfare, warfare.
You should set me up with that fella.
I will.
We should be pals.
I don't want to be famous, but I would just like to talk to somebody who wants to... Somebody besides... I mean, I love talking about music with Jason, but he's really the only person I have at this point.
Nobody else will talk to me about the drum sound on Nothing Wrong With Love.
Yeah.
Nobody would have a ton of clean guitar.
Jason doesn't know what the drum sound on nothing wrong with love.
Jesus Christ.
He's just pretending in the morning.
But, but Dan, uh, you know, good.
Dan's the one that's like, uh, you know, jello is a bet.
Jello is what Johnny rotten should have been or whatever.
You know, he's got all those kinds of theories and philosophies, but at a certain point, and I think it's part of being married.
Yeah.
He, he moved to Eugene, uh,
And he's like, yeah, I live in Eugene.
Is that where Nike's based?
No, they're based in Gresham or something.
But he said, it's still amazing to me that when I look at my kids' birth certificates, they both were born in Eugene, Oregon.
He's like, it's so hard for me to like fathom that.
I have a new thing I do, which is, you know, I already am compulsive.
I'm a happy person.
Well, you know, sure.
Well, I look up.
I look up people.
You know, not in a creepy way, but I'm interested in how tall people are.
I'm interested in when they were born.
You've actually got a spreadsheet about this, right?
I do.
I have several spreadsheets about this.
But the height one is my most famous probably.
But we were watching this not very good TV show on Netflix.
And I really like the actress who's the main, this woman who was in Pitch Perfect, Brittany Snow.
And she's that wonderful, she's the nice one of the mean girls in Pitch Perfect.
Anyhow, she's in this terrible show that Madeline and I are watching called The Hunting Wives.
And I looked her up.
And my new thing is now, yeah, I still look up heights.
But I also like to look up when somebody was born.
And I try to roughly estimate what class I was taking and what I was reading at the time.
I think that's fun.
I think that's very fun.
And I pulled up Brittany Snell, who's 39.
I think that's correct.
I think that's correct.
I pulled it up and I said, hey, Matt, you know.
I'm pretty sure I had Andrea DeMino's American Masterworks class at that time and was reading Absalom, Absalom.
And then, of course, The Inevitable.
So she could totally be my kid.
You would have been 30.
You weren't taking classes.
I'm not 69, although that would be nice.
Oh, that's right.
Oh, nice.
It's one thing to drop a decade.
It's another thing to add a decade.
I think that's a little hurtful.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean it.
I get confused by bananas.
I know what you mean, but doesn't that ever seem bananas where you're like, oh, this is somebody whose career I've been aware of for 10 or 15 years, and they were born, a lot of them were born in 1979.
I'm like, I was a person who had taste about, who had feelings about Eagles albums when I was that age.
I know.
I went to a festival just the other day.
It's very grounding, very centering in some ways.
I went to this music festival because my buddy was, this is just last week, who was like, hey, you want to go to this?
Everybody, I guess, knows that if they, just a little outside.
It's called Tree Ford, I think, or something.
And no, it's not called Tree Ford.
It's got another name.
But so it's a music festival.
It's happening, you know, an hour outside of town.
And my buddy was because all my friends are like, I need somebody to go with me at the very last minute.
Oh, you know what?
John will always do that.
And so we drive out there and there's a bunch of people I know and they're all in their mid to late 30s.
And like you say, I've been watching them come up in the music scene.
But they are younger than me.
And it's not like it used to feel.
I know.
Given how you said that, in what way?
What's the one that really pops out?
Well, so they're all super friendly.
They're all super psyched.
I like the way they interact with each other.
I like the way they interact with me.
These are millennials mostly.
Huh?
Millenniums mostly.
They're all millenniums, right?
In the heart, in the dead center of millenniums.
And they're all great players.
Their bands are great.
You know, I'm like really into their scene in the sense that it's not that I follow their scene, but I'm into it when I'm part of it.
Like I look around and go.
God, you guys are supportive of each other.
I'm like, this is exactly what music is.
I'm selfish enough to always go, fucking A, man, you're so lucky to have this.
Yeah, right.
Especially now.
Bands used to hate each other like games.
I mean, you're just not going to go into a church basement and see AFI or whatever anymore.
It just doesn't exist like that anymore.
That was a terrible example.
But you know what I mean.
Yeah.
But you're not just going to slide into some...
you know, they put an X on your hand and you get to go see Minor Threat.
Like, that doesn't happen as much anymore.
Well, and the thing is, they all grew up in a situation, in a music culture, where people like us
had seen how hard it was for us.
And we were the ones that were like, and this happens a lot in the music community where it got people that are in bands that want to stay in the music scene, but their bands didn't make it possible for them to do that.
Sure.
Transition over to like, I'm going to work for a nonprofit that helps bands.
I'm going to be part of the, this, this company that is kind of like the person who gave the tour to.
Yes.
Right?
The young person who has the sense to go, oh, it isn't that I want to play bass for an unsuccessful hardcore band.
I'd like to help manage bands and help make their careers good.
That's right.
And I was like, you are part of the blessed minority of 19-year-olds that realize that they should be managers, right?
Thank God for you.
But a lot of older people, like people my age were the ones that were like, you know, there need to be more girls in rock.
And so we're going to start the girls in rock camp.
And they were trying to correct for a thing that we saw in our own scene.
Like, where are all the female guitar players?
Right.
And so we're going to.
It has to be something other than bassist named Kim.
And so the.
That's right.
And so these kids grew up in music scenes that were more supportive.
There were more venues.
There were people my age who were like, let me help you.
Especially in Washington and Oregon, I'll bet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was a big part of it.
I mean, the post K, post, let's not, maybe not CZ, but right, wasn't there, there was just much more like opportunity or interest for women?
Tons, tons, tons, tons.
And it was a lot of, it was a lot of people who had washed out.
Yeah, let's say that.
A lot of people who had kind of not washed out of bands, but their bands were clearly not going to make it work.
No, I know.
The time passed, yeah.
And they started to think.
Anyway, and I don't resent these kids for that, because like you say, the number of shitty, moldy, violent rock shows that I went to, like, it's not like I want that.
It was catch as catch can, you know, like you go to what's available.
Well, and also the number of people that handed me a $20 bill after a show and said, sorry, that's all we can, you know.
But anyway, after the show, we're all standing around a couple of the members of a couple of bands.
One of them, like a tremendous guitar player.
And they're all you can see that they all admire me.
Right.
They all think of think of me as like a like an older elder statesman or whatever, which I which I appreciate.
And somebody mentioned a guy I know.
really well a guy i've known for years he's a buddy he's a great guy and somebody was like oh yeah you know uh i was i was talking to so and so and i said that asshole oh my god you know don't leave your wallet around him
The way you do.
And they all, the way we did.
Yeah.
And they all looked at me with this, like, not just blank look, but like blank trying to conceal their horror.
Oh, no.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
He's a really good buddy.
Like I was just saying, you know, like he's like, he's like such a repentant pedophile.
He's like such a prick, you know, your daughters.
No, I'm being serious.
Literally lock them up.
Yeah.
And, and they were like, um, um, sir.
And, and so the conversation like kind of took off again and, um,
And at this point, I'm like, whoa, what was that?
People think about what they're going to say more.
So at some point, you know, somebody said something directed at me like, oh, well, you know, your career or whatever.
And I was like, my career?
I never fucking made more than $2 and fuck them all.
And then everybody again, like just staring at me blankly.
And I'm like, thinking to myself, hey, this is the way bands talk after shows.
Like, this is Generation X insults one another as a form of love.
And also, can we just say, like, as much, first of all, I just want to be very clear.
A lot of times we would just talk like that because we're backstabbing assholes.
But there is another part of that, which is if you're really buddies or if you really do like and admire somebody, you're going to avoid all the great showsing them.
And go, oh, yeah, that guy's entire oover is important.
You'd be like, that piece of shit, I lent him a nine volt, and he never paid me back.
That's more the way you would roll when we were young.
You know, I've never said a nice thing about Jason Finn in my life, but I love him to death.
You spend a lot of time together for somebody.
You know?
But if you ask me... You should ride in a van with Chris Cornelia, of all things.
Like, this guy.
Are you talking... Well, this fucking guy.
Like, Mike Squires and I, when we meet each other, it's like, yeah, hey, how's it going, you know, the old pedophile?
And the other one's like, ah, I hope you die in a fire.
How's the micropenis, asshole?
It's just the way we talk.
Yes.
But...
But I had never been in a situation like that where we were all standing around in the dark in the woods and it's eight of us and we're having a great time.
And then I say something Gen X to a group of millennials and it just is like a lead balloon.
And I left that event and
With no idea how I stand with those kids anymore.
You know, they all really admired me when I got there.
Oh, no.
And now I have no idea whether one of them went to the guy that I was teasing and said, hey, you know, John Roderick actually said some really hurtful things about you.
He said you're a pedophile.
He wouldn't leave his wallet around you or whatever.
I don't know whether they're gossips.
I don't know whether they're all like, oh, I really thought he was nice, but it turns out he's really mean.
He's kind of a bully.
Like who knows?
I came home and sat on the couch and was like, this is maybe one of the first instances that was not an online interaction with a millennial that left me nonplussed.
This was an in-person with totally great rock musician people.
Yeah.
where i came away from it going uh um look i'm i i love everybody i don't i wish i wish good things for every person in the world right and um and so yeah i'm still as you can tell i don't recall anybody ever saying that at a rock show when i was in my 20s and 30s saying what oh i'm saying anything quite that that that um
Quite that kind in such an annoying sweaty way.
Oh, no, no, no.
You would never.
I mean, one time I did go up to Doug Marsh and say, at a buffet line in a backstage and said, hey, Doug, we've met a couple of times before, but I was thinking about this the other day.
If I ran into you, I just wanted to say...
how much your music has meant to me it's really fundamental i think to how what kind of musician i am and i we don't sound like you but but i really have spent a lot of time with your music and in the in the obverse of the the experience i just had with millennials he looked at me like i had just walked up to him and put a pie in my own face
Like, he just had a look of, like, I had just gone, hey, Doug, splat.
You sound like a con artist.
Or something, yeah.
You sound like somebody who.
He's like, what do you want now?
Yeah.
What do you want me to do?
Jack you off?
No.
I just wanted to say.
I just wanted to say.
I just like your band, bro.
Seven up, I touched her thumb.
I mean, he's also pretty special.
Jeez, that's a fucking great record.
It's an incredible record.
It's one of the, if you listen to that record and you listen to all the Seattle bands, all the Seattle bands that started in 1998 and went to 2008, if you listen, any Northwest band.
have you listened to that record and then you listen to the records that followed it they all listened to that record so much that they can't keep it out of their guitar i think that an ultimate alternative waivers in different ways i mean it's i listened to it on headphones the other day all the way through um in a prayerful way and like it's it still is an album that really strikes me and like the i was i don't know i'm just being silly but like seriously
the his clean uh he's kind of famous especially in the later records like another night gum shit what's the one with um carry the zero um but like you know he i think he got more famous for his like wanky guitar solos which good that i love that i love but uh his clean tones his clean tone like he makes the craziest sounds on nothing wrong with love it's stratocasters into compressor pedals
People used to come up to me and say, he just hits a chord.
It's clean, not dirty, but the chord sustains.
Strats already have that really compressy sound, but not an envelope, but like something on there.
But just the way that he mixes, what was the one I was just thinking of?
Not come through me.
Wait, hang on.
That's not it.
Shit, fuck.
I can't think of it.
But...
Oh, you know what's great is Dystopian Dream Girl.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
They're all great.
They're all amazing.
You know what they were when they first arrived with Ultimate Alternative Waivers?
What they were was Pavement if Pavement didn't pretend they couldn't play their instruments.
Yes.
Yes.
There's a, there's a wonderful line.
Um, so I was a teenage fan club fan from Catholic education.
Shut up.
From Catholic education.
But then there was, when they came out with that the same month, I, I got a Nirvana record and, um, bandwagon-esque.
And I think there was a new Superchunk record.
But anyway, that late 91, September, October 91 was a really big time for me.
And albums that ended up having a huge impact on me.
But hearing, wait, what was my point about this?
Da-da-da-da, ultimate, alternative, waivers.
It's like, there's a wonderful line in the first song where it goes, she likes my hair because it's down my back.
It says she likes the band because we pulled in the slack.
And I think in a lot of ways, as much as they did have kind of like wanky parts, I think they had very much pulled in the slack on what had come to be thought of as a slacker sound.
They pulled in the slack.
Well, I mean, yeah, pavement.
I mean, but like, Jesus, don't get me started.
That was before we were called Gen X. That was when we were still slackers.
Thank God.
We were just all, nobody cared.
We didn't need a name.
We didn't deserve a name.
We hadn't earned a name.
Slackers.
Slacker.
You're one big slacker.
Slackity slack, slack, slack.
Slackers.
At least the Beatles with the Beatles.
This is worse than the Beatles, the hippies, and the Nazis all put together.
Those slackers.
I was such a slacker.
You were a slacker.
I slack, you slack, slack almost, slack ice.
When we met in 2003.
2003?
No, it was two.
It was after the...
It was after the first record, but not the second record yet.
2002, we were both slackers.
You were such a slacker at that slacker show.
You were slacking with your slacker buddies.
I was slacking hard.
I slacked hard.
With my slacking band.
And we were like, what's up, slacker?
And you were like, hey, I don't want to come over to my house.
You know, we were slacking motherfuckers, if I could say.
To paraphrase Mac and Super Chat.
And listen, I'm working, but I'm not working for you, slack motherfucker.
That's right.
I don't want a job where I make anything shipping.
No, now I'm going to have to go listen to music.
Boo.
Well, you know, if you run into him again, tell Dan Carlin he's got a fan.
Well, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to say, hey, Dan Carlin, you need to meet Merlin Mann, and he's going to do what you would have done, which is say, I don't know, do I need to meet him?
And I'm going to say, you know what?
No, it's just nice to know that somebody appreciates your work.
It's nice.
Yeah, that's true.
That's true.
I did that over the weekend.
I had a nice exchange with somebody who's work.
Who?
You can go ahead and out them.
Nobody listens to this show.
I do this sort of a lot, which is that anytime I'm realizing how much I like what somebody does...
especially if i don't know them i'll just write them a note and just say hey i just want to let you know i i really like the work that you do and i look forward to seeing what you do uh thanks for doing what you do you know pretty much that's thanks for doing what you do and like no email signature to say i'm the inbox here okay nothing like that but just like and it just it it almost always ends up making me really happy you know well you know one of the things that happens in tweet ups is
is we go around, everybody says how they started.
What their favorite thing is that you've done?
Well, no, how they started.
It's always the question.
How did you get here?
Here we are in a hotel lobby in Raleigh, North Carolina.
What twists in your life brought you to this point?
Yeah, moments not together like magnets, exactly.
And they always say, well, I was a fan of Merlin at some pre-podcast point in my life.
I never thought he was funny.
he was saying something and i was like huh and then you look nice today we're running out of time oh no and i'm always like it's always the same it's always something like that it's always something well i followed merlin through the forest music and he was throwing he was throwing chicken drumsticks
Out of the, you know, up in the air, out of the windows of his limousine.
He was drunk in a gorilla suit calling out bingo numbers.
You know what comes out tomorrow?
You know what arrives tomorrow?
My 4K UHD Blu-ray of Master and Commander in a steelbook.
You're going to watch it immediately?
Well, I'm to prep.
I watched it the other night.
But then, yeah, when it arrives, yeah, yeah.
Are you going to watch it with Jason on the phone?
I think he'd like that.
I think he'd appreciate it.
I've been admonished from talking about my text exchanges with people.
But who admonished you?
I just say, you know, I'll say what I always say.
I think it might be the best movie.
And I still haven't read the books.
There's like 20 books.
I can't read all the books.
Is this one of these things where you say that somebody admonished you, but it was really you admonishing yourself?
Yes.
I think that happens a lot.
You're like, somebody told me blah, blah.
And I'm like, was that you?
It says here he was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in the 1960s.
Huh.
He must have a hard time asserting things.
Yeah, I wonder how tall he is.
Put that right in the spreadsheet.
Merlin man, feet, net worth.
No.
Merlin man, wife.