Ep. 603: "Fewer Me"
Hi, John.
Merlin Mann.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Roderick on the line.
Roderick on the line.
With Merlin Mann.
Featuring John Roderick.
Hi, Merlin.
Introducing...
Dr. Theophilus.
See, everybody remembers Tweaky.
Yeah, Tweety.
Tweaky.
You're talking about the guy from Wilco?
Uncle Tupelo?
Yeah, Tweety.
Get back the keys to my heart.
You know, Dr. Theophilus, I mean, Tweaky, given I think some of us will know
That is the voice of the great Mel Blanc.
And some people will remember that he's a little robot who, let's be honest, looks like a penis.
I don't know, Buck.
He does look like a penis.
But the thing is, I mean, the ironical part is he's just a vessel.
He exists just to carry around Dr. Theophilus.
Am I remembering this correctly, John?
It was some 40-plus years ago.
Yeah.
Yeah, Dr. Theopolis, I think.
He was the pendant that looked like a robot face.
Yeah, he's a Roomba.
He's exactly the size of a Roomba.
Now I got to look him up.
But what we're talking about here is a TV program that I would peg to about 1978 or 9.
That's correct.
Called Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
Yep.
That's it.
And I'm not looking at it.
As you know, I don't look at the internet when we're recording.
I know.
I know you don't.
I just want to make sure people know.
Because, like, I don't want to be right.
I want to make a good show.
So anyways, starring Gil Gerard as Buck Rogers.
That's right.
And very, very memorably for me, an actress called Erin Gray.
Erin Gray.
And she had a form-fitting space outfit.
So delightful.
And the kind of slight build to which I still find myself attracted.
And then there's a little robot probably played by Billy Barty.
I will look that up because if it's Billy Barty, I get bonus burgers.
You do get bonus burgers.
And so it wasn't a very good show, but it did have Aaron Gray in a space outfit.
Well, what Buck Rogers in the 25th century did for me is Billy Barty.
Oh, I'll find out.
What it did for me was, you know, ever since, I'm not going to say it was Blade Runner, because we blame a lot of things on Blade Runner.
We sure do.
We surely do.
But there was a moment, and I think of it as, well, you know, Road Warrior.
There was a place...
In popular culture where we decided that the future was going to be like slovenly.
I guess it was Star Wars, right?
That the future was going to be a little bit shabby.
A phrase I learned a few years ago, kit bashing.
And I think that's some combination of like, you know how they...
The people who made the models for the 77 movie, they actually made it, and a lot of times, they would add what some people call greebles, like those little boxy things to the Millennium Falcon, and they would get that from model kits.
Me and you were put together as kids.
This could come from a Sherman tank, but that could also be part of- All those blasters were like real guns, and then they just put some extra gun on it.
Then they beat the shit out of them.
At the time, the comparison, a lot of people made
was to Star Trek and how everything always looked clean and well-ordered.
Nobody had to worry about money and stuff like that.
But there was... Oh, go ahead.
No, no, that's all.
Just to say that that introduced this idea of what we would now maybe consider like a lived-in world.
Lived-in.
But when you get to something like the second Mad Max movie,
Which is one of the great movies.
We have a different name for it in the States.
Yeah.
We call it the road warrior.
Yes.
Yeah.
Um, what happened?
It's a hell of a movie.
And the kid with the boomerang.
Remember that kid?
I think of it as a problem that started with the first matrix movie.
Oh, but I don't know a lot of things on the matrix too.
If we're being honest,
it's not a problem i'm not saying it's a problem but all science fiction now if you'll notice uh depicts some aspect of the future uh there there's always a village there's always a visit to a community and the community is always very multi-racial everyone is wearing flax or linen
I love Mandalorian, but that happened a lot.
When they go to the little swamp.
The planet where they're harvesting shrimp.
Oh, my little shrimp.
It looks like a rice farm, but it's rice made of shrimp.
And remember, they tripped.
They dig the little tunnel things, and then they tripped the AT-AT.
They did.
They got the AT-ATs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But no, but when Mandalorian is only the latest in, or they're not even the latest, I've seen it 20 times since then.
I totally take your meaning, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But there's this idea that in the future, the people, I'm not talking about the soldiers or the stars of the show, but just generally the people
are all going to have dreadlocks, and they're all going to be wearing sort of linen robes.
Battlefield Earth, certainly.
Yeah, and they're kind of a colorless clothes.
Yeah, Planet of the Apes had a little bit of that, you know?
And they're going to be, and basically what it is, is it's like a fish concert parking lot, except with a multiracial audience instead of just an all-white audience that might be at a fish concert.
No offense to fish listeners who are like, what?
No.
um but i started to see this over and over everywhere i looked and i was like this isn't necessarily what the future is going to look like and i remembered back to buck rogers in the 25th century where the future was still people in like hilariously tight shiny outfits right and flowing gowns
Logan's Run, on which I feel like a lot of the aesthetic for that show seems to be based.
Clean world, but lots of people in either form-fitting space costumes or some kind of robe.
And then you've got to go to Carousel.
A lot of us should have gone to Carousel a long time ago.
There are a lot of people listening who are going to say, well, wait a minute.
What about the Rogue One television show?
There's a lot of people listening.
What about the Rogue One television show?
Andor is full of people in flowing robes that are dancing around with like, you know, the old dance, the future dance, which you saw a lot, which is people holding a ribbon.
Yeah, but it looks kind of like a courtly, like maybe 15th, 16th century kind of like formal, kind of like a line dance.
A slow line dance or a, yeah, like very formal where you bow to the other person.
Very courtly, yes.
Yeah, courtly.
See, that's the Star Trek future that I remember from my childhood.
Before everybody started like harvesting shrubs,
You know what this is, John?
And they were getting shrimp out their rice patty.
You know what this is, John, in some ways, if I could say?
Another thing, a lot of people listening are not going to know this.
We talked today about country music.
But for the longest time, at least when I was coming up, that's exactly how they go.
And Carter family, and you get the Carter Scratch, which they now do have a cream for, but it was the Depression at the time.
Yeah.
You're my sunshine, John.
But my point is, what a lot of people today might know is there's a reason that for the longest time they call it a country and Western.
You know?
Right.
Like, do you put country music or Western music?
Right.
Because those are different kinds of music.
Different musics.
Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys are real different from the Yodel and Breakman or Hank Williams or whatever.
One's more twangy, one's a little bit more urban.
So in some ways, you look today and like anybody with any sense who knows their history can say, oh, I see that coming much more actually from the Western tradition than the country tradition.
Is it possible that I don't want to just make it as simple as Star Trek versus Star Wars?
Because a lot of people blame a lot of things on that.
Yeah.
But isn't that kind of what we're talking about?
Like the threads that we're talking about are like these two different bloodlines of sci-fi aesthetic.
Well, yeah, because, you know, Star Trek was also a multi-ethnic future where everybody, you know, it was like, it was not a lily white universe.
I was like that blue guy with the white hair.
The blue guy with the white hair?
Exactly.
He represents all the blue guys.
His name's probably Org or some shit.
but but the idea of the future and civilization was not that it was going to be um like like noble peasantry it was that we were all going to be flying around with levitation shoes and the levitation shoes are gone and now we have this idea that what is the the noble future or the people the people
are intrinsically, if you leave the people, it's like the ur dog.
If you leave dogs alone, they all go back to being a yellow, medium-sized dog with big ears.
If you leave the people alone for long enough, they all go back to wearing flax, shapeless flax garments.
Is there a cultural reversion to the mean?
It's a cultural version to the meme.
Everyone has dreadlocks.
There's always a wise elder black lady who's, you know, a little on the chunky side.
You've got a magic negro in a railroad.
She runs the village.
There's a magic negro in the Matrix for what it's worth.
Everywhere.
Everywhere.
And there's a kid waiting.
He's got him waiting in the lobby.
And he's out there and says there's no spoon.
There's no spoon.
But she makes cookies, and yes, she makes cookies.
Soup on a garbage can lid.
White sauce, not a problem.
So, yeah, that was, I think that Buck Rogers in the 25th century.
It's so early.
Doesn't it feel early?
It feels early.
I just woke up.
It's a holiday week, so it's super confusing.
Yeah, you wrote me and you were like, hey, are we, what's up?
Or no, what did you say?
Someday I'll tell you why I do this.
Hello?
Something I was like, huh?
Huh, what?
Oh, uh.
Yeah.
Give me half an hour.
You're not a big calendar guy.
Yeah.
Calendar guy.
Calendar guy.
I love my love.
I love my calendar guy.
I'm not a calendar guy.
No.
No.
But it's also because I need to know how long I have to make noise with my printing machines.
And if I know there's two hours versus I don't know means I'm reluctant to start a print if I don't have time to finish it.
That's why I do that.
Also, I think punctuality is a sign of character.
You do.
But the point is, this is really blowing my mind now, because we're talking about aesthetics, we're talking about culture.
Is there any element, am I jumping too far ahead too fast, but is there an element of, to call it utopia, dystopia, I think is the wrong direction, more like...
A lot of stuff seems to be, including the robes, seems to be a callback to something like the Roman Empire.
Or, you know, the precedence of the Greeks before that.
But some kind of, like, people stand around, you watch something like I, Claudius, which still fucking bangs.
And you watch I, Claudius, it's got Brian Blessed.
I mean, it's got everybody.
It's got John Hurt.
Like, it's...
And anyways, but everybody's wandering around in robes undermining each other.
But here's the thing, because part of the utopia dystopia thing is also like, well, what happens?
A lot of what happens in these is based on what's the system that brought us to where we are?
And so in the case of a lot of the Star Wars, more contemporary Star Wars stuff today, I guess, you know, picking up on that idea of like the Empire is oppressing these people, you know, in the case of Andor, you know, you're using this basically just to suck out all the resources and increase Empire.
Suck out the resources, yes.
Right.
I mean, like, doesn't it seem like there's also a lot of stuff that's about responses to certain kinds of what ends up being authoritarian systems, but how did it start out?
Like with Mad Max, you're out of resources, right?
Yep.
It's resources all the way down.
You're out of shrimps.
I think I might've jumped too far ahead.
Well, no, I don't think so.
I think you're right on it.
Because the thing is, okay.
Okay.
So, so, so we're going to, I'm going to mention something in popular culture.
I'm sorry.
We don't normally do that here.
There's a TV show that it sounds like you might be possibly familiar with calling Andor.
Yes.
Okay.
It's okay.
I'm not going to let people know that you've actually watched it.
Don't worry.
You have a character in that who's a character that I was first familiar with from Return of the Jedi, which is Mon Mothma.
Now, she's a super interesting character in this, I think.
Also, I don't have that many Star Wars hills to die on, but I think her purple limousine might be the coolest vehicle in all of Star Wars.
And there's not that much...
Stuff out there about it and I don't chauffeur is a spy and an assassin.
Well, you know, it's complicated Here's one thing to know if you're in a movie and Mark Strong shows up It's useful to note note very quickly whether or not he's wearing a wig
Because Mark Strong in a wig, la la la, it's a terrific Smith song, is different than Mark Strong with no hair.
Now normally you're used to Mark Strong, who I think is a secret Brit.
He's normally, go look at Mark Strong and you'll know who I mean.
He's the guy with the, well, you know, Stellan Skarsgård has an outstanding wig and it's part of the bit.
But in this one, Mark Strong is wearing a supposedly plausible wig when he's working with Mon Mothma to undermine empire things.
Now, she, though, she's a scrapper and a rebel, and she puts herself on the line.
She's a goddamn senator, and she's married to this douchebag who runs around in Komodo.
Komodo's a daughter in a cult.
She's got a lot of balls in the air before we even get to the chauffeur.
But she, it's interesting, though, because she's part of that courtly Romanesque...
Similar with Dune, maybe, right?
You know, like where you got to go and like, you know, you make deals to trade wives with each other or whatever.
What's the one that was on TV where you bring the great houses together?
You know, that kind of thing.
Because that's real different than when you get down in the weeds with baby Andor when he's little with his sister and wanting to go out and tear apart a TIE fighter.
I don't know.
Is the body politic involved in any of this?
I think what you're describing is that at some point we here in culture producing the United States.
Yes.
Somehow the writer's room
stopped believing that technology was going to improve the world, improve our social problems, that technology was the path.
We knew technology was going to improve the world and we thought, and this is one of those category errors that you can't help but make because you're human and exist in time, which only goes the one way for now, is that
We know that technology is going to improve, and we have what turns out to be a very unrealistic idea about probably both the time frame and the nature of that change.
We've talked about that a lot with the Internet here, something you bring up a lot.
When the Internet first came along to most people, it seemed like Encarta.
the CD encyclopedia.
It kind of seemed like, oh, anything you want to get is out there, but you can also connect with people.
And from those seemingly anodyne, sweet human reasons in 1995, we get to where we are now, right?
Unintended consequences didn't turn exactly how John Roderick expected.
the problem is that it's become a lazy trope that all of technology is ultimately like this the solution we'll figure it out eventually the way for people to live peaceful this is what it is the trope is that the the peaceful people the natural way for us to be the
The thing that empires and monsters and big machines and mining, those things are allied against our natural way, which is to farm shrimp dressed in linen.
He he he.
With, you know, with people from and living in peace.
People don't want any trouble.
John, they don't want any trouble.
They're already having enough trouble getting the shrimp out of the rice.
Yeah.
And then all of a sudden an at at is there and and it just it became.
Don't provoke them.
You know, just a lazy trope, but the central trope of all science fiction or fantasy writing now.
And it has been now for decades.
It was all written by Democrats in the 90s, that there was some kind of like technocracy improvements to life that were going to enable us to apply technology to very sturdy and long lived problems.
Well, I don't want to go on a rant, but I think that is part of it.
I mean, the 90s, the second half of the 90s especially, are looking fucking weirder and worse to me.
Not the music, but like the stuff that was going on in retrospect, three strikes stuff.
But you know, the technocracy, just this idea.
Do you know what I mean when I say that?
Just this sort of like there are all these solutions that we think we understand how to apply things around various kinds of technology to problems that we have.
And it certainly won't make it, it can't make it worse.
And it seems like it almost has to make it better.
And maybe it's more, you know what I mean?
It's like it was such a weird myth.
It's always been such a strange fable, but we keep, it keeps being a huge part of our decision making.
But I mean, the problem is that if you go back 200 years and you look at the explosion of technology, there's a hundred ways in which technology has incredibly improved our lives and made the world a better place.
It's just that you also look at all the fascist movements from the 19th century to now, and you see like, oh, technology really makes it easy to march people into camps too.
Like technology is not...
That was the problem with the future that we saw in the mid-century, which was like, wait a minute, our science fiction is all utopian and it's not accounting for all of the ways technology gets misused.
But here we are, just as we are yelling about the internet all the time, we're living in a world right now where I think our millennial friends, and I think we used to have a millennial listener or two,
I think that they look at the current world and they see technology can only bring us down, right?
It's like, although we're all using it.
They haven't seen, well, as a digital native, as some people call it, or, you know, you're from that time where the internet has always been part of your life.
So you didn't get to be there for the time that we thought it would be different.
Yeah, right.
And also, or even the early days, the live journal kind of days, like you can't see a situation where global capitalism was once imagined to be the solution to a lot of problems.
Global capitalism was anonymous with freedom, or at least in our, in our version of that.
Yeah.
You can't have one without the other peas and carrots.
It was going to bring freedom to the world too.
You know, it was like all these people that were living in slavery were going to have good solid jobs.
And so
Yeah, this dystopian, this lazy, lazy dystopianism now where nobody wants to write a thing that says, well, actually one day the right voting machines and the right combination of participatory democracy and strong, smart leaders who have been to college and, you know, and paid attention.
Yeah.
Um, maybe there will be clean water for everybody and maybe there won't be, you know, slavery, uh, just kind of pushed over into a different over into Myanmar, but maybe all of these freedoms are compatible with technology and we will be able to dance with ribbons.
We don't have to live in the swamps.
With dreadlocks.
It's so hard to dance with ribbons when you're hungry or unemployed.
You don't have any shrimp in your rice.
And there's a lot of people now that, A, are dancing with ribbons.
Ribbon dancing benefits from plenty.
But B, they're feeling guilty about dancing with ribbons because it's ribbon privilege.
And so, you know, so they're hiding it or whatever.
Or there are a lot of people that grew up dancing with ribbons and now are really against ribbons.
They're like, so they're yelling.
That skips a generation, don't it?
Yeah.
They're like, oh my God, are you still dancing with ribbons?
It's like, it's like Mon Mothma's daughter, whose name I don't know, but I think she has a braid.
It's like, like her joining a cult.
She basically joins a conservative religious cult as a backlash to living with her douchebag dad and her.
Exactly, right?
And that's happening everywhere you look.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Douchebag Dad's all over, although I do like his neo-Japanese sense of style.
That whole thing.
He's got the vibe of a sex man.
He's a little bit vibey.
Doesn't he have like a... But he's also a cuck.
Doesn't he have like a qui-gon?
She just walks all over him.
She's like, shut up.
He seems like a rich boy.
He should thank his lucky stars.
He's getting walked on by Ma and Mothma.
Jiminy Christmas.
And yeah, it's a good, but doesn't he have like, but you know, that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away too, is the other thing.
Like who knows how much Star Wars DNA is actually in all of us.
You mean like Napoleon, you get a molecule Napoleon in you.
Yeah.
Every sourdough bread has some Napoleon in it.
A butterfly flapped its wings on Coruscant, and here I am, you know, sitting here.
I got a bunch of plastic hangers on the couch.
I don't even use plastic hangers.
Yeah, go ahead.
Plastic hangers?
I don't even, plastic hangers?
No plastic hangers ever.
Okay, so I was referring earlier to a small man with a big career, Billy Barty.
Oh, Billy Barty.
You'll know Billy Barty from lots of things.
From everything.
But especially, of course, Dr. Shrinker.
But Billy Barty, when you see him, you'll know him.
Like Kenny Baker.
He's been a little guy in a lot of things.
Or Willow.
I wish they could say that about me.
He's been a little guy in a lot of things.
I watched a four hour video about Disney stuff yesterday and about the idea of these real life characters they've been trying to build for years.
And a lot of them were, it was like a mechanical Turk.
It was like a John in a box.
Some of them, apparently they would get a very small person to be inside of, who's the one that needs to be found?
Nemo?
And they drive him around and there'd be like a little Billy Barter sized guy inside the Nemo.
so that's and the whole party inside of rtg2 no that was kenny baker oh yeah kenny baker also was in a double act in the 60s with jack purvis so if you see a little person in and if you google there's a wonderful eight by ten of the two of them little guys in tuxedos jack purvis i think best known as the walking trash can guy that's him yeah remember when when uh when uh c-3po's really torn up because he can't find his lover in the jawa truck
And the little guy walks by.
I think it's called a Gronk Droid, I want to say.
But Jack Purvis is taller than Kenny Baker.
And these people, many of them are on my Celebrity Heights list.
Please remember to like and subscribe.
Billy Barty, though, did not play Tweaky.
But can I give you a turns out?
Yes.
I looked this up on the internet.
Twiki is played by a man named Felix Silla, or Sia, I don't know, S-I-L-L-A.
And he was Twiki, and there's some wonderful, okay, I'll send you one right now.
There's some wonderful photos of him in the Twiki outfit.
Oh, that's my wife.
She's not going to understand why I am sending this.
I'm going to send this to you.
Instead, I'm clicking.
He's, you know who he also was?
He was Cousin It in the Addams Family.
The big walking hair guy?
Yeah, sure.
Wait, is that Cousin It?
Yeah, Cousin It.
What's the hand called?
Mr. Hand.
Mr. Hand.
No.
You're on my time now, Mr. Han says.
Remember that?
He says, you're on my time now, and he locks the door.
You remember that?
What was on Jeff Spicoli's pizza, John?
What was on his pizza?
Do you remember?
That is not the type of thing that my mind recalls, what is on Jeff Spicoli's pizza.
I greatly misread that, because that strikes me as exactly the sort of shit you would remember.
No, I remember the big arc.
And I thought I'd make you look really good.
No, the big arc.
I remember the big arc of the show.
Remember that guy sells concert tickets?
You can go see Cheap Trick.
Mommy's all right.
Daddy's all right.
And it's got J.J.
Ellis in it.
Jennifer Jason Leigh.
So as you can see from this photograph.
Cameron Crowe was just here in Seattle and he did a talk.
He's divorced from Hart now, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
And Hart actually got back together and they played a show like last night?
Hart the band.
Two nights ago?
Yeah.
Those ladies ain't young.
No, but they still rock.
No, it's good.
They're still rocking an American.
You know, they really deeply lost me in the early 80s.
Yeah, that was a sad time, although they sold millions and millions of records.
I know, good for them, Hakuna Matata, but I'm just saying Magic Man and... Magic Man and what's the other one I liked?
Barracuda.
Those two songs.
Magic Man, the arrangement of Magic Man is full of cocaine, but it's super good.
Yeah, I mean, that stuff, that's like the American Led Zeppelin.
What was Cameron Crowe doing there then?
Was he there to visit his kids or something?
Oh, no, he loves it up here.
He's doing a thing.
He didn't even just write a book?
Yeah, that's what it was.
I think he wrote a book about being Cameron Crowe.
Yeah, and he was doing a talk, and it was one of those things.
This happens all the time up here where there's so much going on, and I feel like...
I used to know what was going on.
And now I feel like a lot of the time I know what's going on the day after it went on because people are like, oh, I was at this thing last night.
And I was like, well, why wasn't I at that thing?
because i didn't know they call it well or it's just like i i i would have been at that normally except i wasn't for whatever reason and so this cameron crow thing so years ago years ago somebody offhand at some hollywood party
sidles over to me and he's like yeah i was talking to cameron crowe he's really into the long winters oh and i was like i think he likes music from what i can tell i think so i think that's what i've heard yeah and i was like really and so ever since then i'm talking about 2007 to now i've been waiting for a call from cameron crowe oh
And I know his ex-wife a little.
From heart.
From heart.
We just did a show together not very long ago.
Last year, I guess.
I mean, I don't know her like, hey, let's hang out.
I know her like, we nod each other backstage and like, hi, nice to see you.
But Cameron Crowe, I feel like is somebody that if he and I got on an elevator, we would get off that elevator best friends and we would- Did you worry you can't see each other out?
Maybe.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
You know what I mean?
There's times where you think like maybe sort of like all the great shows, you know, where you run into somebody and it ends up that you're both like a negatively charged side of the battle.
Yeah, you occupy the same exact space in the world.
Yes.
And you've talked about this, that being able to come into a room and like overtake, run the room.
I hope.
I've had that in a lot of green rooms at Sketchfest, if I'm being honest.
Sketchfest.
There's a lot of big timing by unhappy people at those things.
I got an email the other day from... Said they were suckers?
It said they were suckers.
No, you know, for the last five years, I've waited for us to get invited back to Sketchfest.
Oh, John.
And this was the year... This was the year that I drew the line in the sand where I was like, listen, if I don't hear from those guys, then...
They're going on my shit list.
How will they know that you didn't pay any attention to that?
They're going on my bad list.
Uh-oh.
Yep, now they are.
That's where they are.
You don't want that.
On the bad list.
Nope, nope, nope.
But there's a lot of big-timing everywhere, but that's the thing about Cameron Crowe.
I don't think he's a big-timer.
I think he's the opposite.
I suspect he knows who he is.
he for sure and i saw some pictures of the because edved was doing the interviewing and god bless him and everybody said he did a great job he's very nice but i don't think that he's like the the best like
I don't know.
Did I ever tell you the story?
Duff McKagan was doing a book tour for one of his books.
His books are like, hey, man.
Yeah, I've lost three kidneys.
Yeah, you can just be like a dude.
I mean, not to spare us, but part of the thing is you described him, I think, as being very cool, very talented, and super sharp, which from every band photo of Guns N' Roses I ever saw, he looked more to me like...
What was left to Sid Vicious like he seemed like kind of like bad news and kind of a train wreck But he's a really sharp guy who like got through fucking a lot, right?
That's right.
That's right and and came out of it like a pretty cool guy Yeah, you wouldn't I'm sure we say that because if you've ever seen a photo of Guns N' Roses He doesn't look like the one different fella now, but he wrote a lot of those songs strangely
But earlier you said something and it made me think of I used to love her, but I had to kill her for some reason.
You said something earlier in the cadence of your sentence made me think.
And that's not a song that I think of very much.
I used to love her, but I had to kill her.
It all comes around.
Everything is.
It was a different time, you know, immigrants and, you know.
But so Duff had a book event.
Axel, you're such a caution.
And he invited Chris Novoselic to be the person, I think, who interviewed him, maybe?
Like, it was like... He picked... No, sorry.
I think I want to check my parentheses.
Edved had picked Chris Novoselic to interview Edved.
Duff McKagan.
Oh, Duff McKagan had said, I'd like to be interviewed by the bass player from Nirvana.
Yeah, it's like a bass player thing.
We're all going to get up there.
And it's a book event.
It's at a club, but it's at a big rock club.
And that's kind of the fun thing, too.
But it's going to be like two chairs on stage, and we're going to talk.
And I would have been the natural person to ask because of the ability to talk to people.
This was a situation where they came out, they sat down, and Chris Novoselic said, so you got a book?
And Duff was like, yeah, man, I wrote this book about...
you know being a bass player and you know going around the world and chris novoselic said you know i was a bass player and then talked for an hour oh and i always worry that's me and and duff i don't after about 15 minutes like had a very like mirth full face like we're really you're really doing this
and then after a half an hour he was you know what could he do and duff's been in the spotlight for years so he knows not to turn to the audience and be like what the is going on like he just sat there and and wrote it out right right right but it was uh i and i'm not saying that that's uh at vet at all he is not that he's it's funny um your story that you're telling me reminds me a little bit of an event that you and i attended together where somebody kind of took over the event and
And you recall the event and you found it frustrating.
But what's funny is the person who took over that event is one of the only people I've ever interviewed in a formal way in front of people.
Oh, I remember this.
So Hodgman very kindly invited me to interview him for something where he came to town and it was on City Arts and Lectures on KQED.
Yes.
And so that means that somewhere here on my computer, I have an MP3 of the actor Linda Hunt, who's also not a very tall person.
The actor Linda Hunt sang my name.
Oh, that's nice.
She said it was Merlin Mann.
Isn't that kind of funny, though, how it's all connected?
Yeah, it is.
It's difficult.
The reason I mentioned that is not the big time, but to say I was really, I felt very intimidated by that.
Not just because John's a sharp guy, but like honestly, like I didn't want to make him regret having chosen me.
You like to do a good job is one thing about you.
I would say I like to do a surprisingly good job, by which I mean whatever you came in with, I would like to be a little better than you expected in a way that you hadn't expected.
And that to me is what's entertainment rather than, you know, I don't know, podcasts where you read facts over on Musicbed personally.
Anyway, that's just how I roll.
But I found that very intimidating.
Yeah.
And I have to say one of the things, because it's a, as we say in software, a known issue, is I didn't want to find myself stepping on his bits or talking about myself in a way that didn't directly support.
You know who's good at this is Dave Eggers, who I think interviewed Hodgman a different time.
Dave Eggers is really, really good at that.
A more perhaps Conan O'Brien style interview, where like if you're on Conan, I just watched a bunch of videos this morning of Conan's show and
Uh, things with Jim Downey and a bunch of things with Matthew Reese, who's an actor I'm a little obsessed with right now.
Yeah, he's a good actor.
He's really good.
And he was on there talking about his appearance in Cocaine Bear and the time that he was on Columbo, which I just downloaded from 2003.
Um, anyways, um, and...
For a more Conan-style interview, which is like, well, Letterman, like if you're on Letterman's show on Netflix, like part of the fun is it's David Letterman.
So he's going to, it's not just going to be like a classic or Graham Norton, I guess would be another.
It's not a class.
All the great ones, really.
I mean, Johnny Carson was a bit of a cipher, but somebody like Dick Cavett, part of the appeal was that it was Dick Cavett talking to John Lennon.
He wouldn't necessarily go off and talk about two years he was in college in the middle of an interview with John Lennon.
But you've got to leaven that in a way that feeds the subject of the interview.
It needs to nourish them rather than deplete them.
Yeah.
And really just an amuse-bouche of who the fuck you are is probably more than enough.
Because the thing to always keep in mind is that every time anything is happening with more than one person, like an interview or a podcast or whatever it is, there are a very small handful of people who love the dynamic between those two people.
And then probably, well, obviously the hugest amount is people who have no idea.
But then there are going to be people who fucking hate one of the people.
And are like the whole time, like, why isn't the other guy talking now?
It's amazing to me that you don't want to be that character.
You know what I mean?
It's amazing the number of people that listen to podcasts and they actively hate one of the two people.
And they've been listening to the podcast for seven years.
There was a time, don't ask me why, but there was a time a million years ago where I started watching that automobile show with the three English guys.
And I disliked all of them for different reasons.
And I wasn't that into cars.
And by the end, then you hear more and more about the one guy.
And you're like, oh, man, I just, you know, it's at that point, you know, I'm not super in it for the, for the, it's my belief, as I've said to many people, that I think with podcasts, at least in my experience, I come for the topic and I stay for the voice.
That it's, that's why I don't feel any compunction about being myself when I talk about computers.
Because there's already, I don't know if you guys have noticed this, there's already a fair amount of information out there about computers.
On top of which there's also like a fair amount of commentary, meta talk, cross talk.
All that stuff is out there in abundance.
So like, why would I want to be anything except who I am?
If that's my role.
But if my role is to be on stage and draw the best,
out of the person I'm interviewing, I should always be, if I have to fail over in one direction, I should fail over in the direction of less me, fewer me.
Well, I'm dealing with this exact thing.
No, with what?
Well, I don't know if you recall, but Ken Jennings has left my other podcast.
Is this known?
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It is known.
Okay.
And the first episode of non-Ken Jennings Omnibus has been released.
For FTC reasons, we're not being compensated for this, are we?
This advertisement that I'm doing?
It's gratis.
And I think you can play up to eight seconds unless you review it, because if you review it, you can play the whole thing.
But just so, I think people should know about this, that your show has changed, but it's still around.
And like the world is changing.
So the, the, the, the, the question, the interview question now is kind of on its head because I have someone, I have every week, a different person who is a, probably a fan of the show and a listener to the show who understands the rhythm and the cadence, but understands that they're not Ken Jennings and they're going to come on and they're going to talk to me about a thing that they know a lot about.
But the show can't be just a stranger coming on the show and talking from a PowerPoint demonstration, like straight at the listener for 45 minutes.
You've got to establish the relationship between you two, which sounds like the way you've described it to me, the way the show is organized, that's part of the bit, is that this is what these roles are.
And it's different than it was before, but we're doing a different thing here, and here's what that's going to be.
But there's always that thing of, like, you've also got to get good
at getting past what your relationship is in a way that's both brief and entertaining, in my opinion.
Unless the whole premise of the show, which it's not, is what your relationship is.
You've got to be like, hey, so what's your deal?
It's like, hey, I'm Jack, big fan of the show, and I have a lot of things to say about Korean fan death.
And you're like, oh, great.
Well, blah, blah, blah.
What's your favorite episode?
And he'll go blah.
And then you're like, so what's the deal with Korean fan death?
Which I think you've actually already covered, but...
It's a topic worth covering.
I've given you some ideas.
Yeah, you have.
It's definitely on the list.
Don't I have a topic?
Don't I have a topic?
Well, you're going to be on the show one of these days.
Do you want me to tell people what my topic is?
Well, no, no.
You've got to keep it secret.
That's the thing.
It's the big reveal.
And it's more professional for me if people don't know.
That's right.
That's exactly right.
It's actually fewer both of us.
Although people do read the, but often the title is cryptic.
Often they're like, what the hell are you talking about?
Read what?
But, but the, oh, the show notes, you know, the, uh, like, uh, like when they log on and they're like, oh, you go to the website and they'll say, this is Jack.
He's the Korean fan death guy.
Right.
Okay.
But the problem is that all of the people that are coming on the show so far, at least are not professional broadcasters or entertainers.
And they know that about themselves.
But so, you know, I advise you for a reason.
It's tough, man.
It's tough.
And conversation says you got to bake a cake before you invent the universe.
And you end up doing that every week in terms of like tech setup in terms of like so many variables where you do have to bake the universe like for every session in some ways, which is a lot of effort.
it is it is it's much harder it's more work for me to do than it was before and i'm not even doing the research on the shows okay but it's very interesting to talk to a different person every week who is like i say very vested in the lore very um very like super down with the clown you know like they're ready to party they want to talk about
the history of the rubber band or whatever.
And they also are, at least so far, all of them very self-aware about the fact that as soon as they see me on the Zoom screen, there's just this deer in the headlights moment of like, holy shit, like what?
I still get that when I meet people.
But you know, I have to say, and this is not to blow smoke up anybody's skirt, but it also, given any number of factors that you will go through someone's head,
Having been interested in a podcast with John Roderick and Ken Jennings, if somebody's listened to more than two episodes of that show, well, they're probably fairly sharp.
If they arrived at Ken Jennings, they came at it through one of the more difficult network game shows that's ever existed.
If they come at it through you, it's songs about spies dying and stuff like that.
So you're going to get a sharper audience than people who are there to find out about Republican powders.
right well right like very sharp audience and very but the problem is right most people show up this is just this is just baked into it i would do this if i were going on the show they show up with their notes and they're ready to tell the story from the notes and then i say so
have you ever seen a grown man naked?
And they go, they go, it's just like, I just threw a grenade in their lap because that's, they're not ready.
Flipping through notes, flip up.
How do I get back to what I was?
And so that dynamic.
Caroline Levitt up there with that little tabbed binder.
It's exactly the opposite of like being on stage.
Absolutely.
A podcast is not a script.
That's a script.
The scripts are a different thing.
Outlines turn into scripts.
Be careful.
But it's also like when you're watching Dick Cavett interview John Lennon, you want to hear John Lennon and you're like, okay, Dick Cavett can get in here too because he's also.
But in this situation, my job is, it's sort of more David Letterman.
I can't they don't want me to let them talk for 40 minutes out of nervous desire to get to the end of the show.
Right.
They want me for you to like know enough about you're listening to them.
You just met them.
And I hope this doesn't sound condescending because like I know this more from being on the one side of it than the other.
But it's for somebody to like even be able to gently poke fun at you because of what they've just learned about you.
Like, that's fun.
It's exciting.
I mean, you see it when, like, Ricky Jay picks somebody out of the audience, like, to come up and play gin rummy with them.
And the thrill of, like, getting to be the moron with somebody whose work you enjoy.
Yes.
Yeah.
Not moron, but you know what I mean, right?
Like, it's okay.
Like stuff you wouldn't tolerate from somebody on a bus.
I would be more than happy to be berated by Ricky Jay.
Me too.
But this is the thing about this new show dynamic, which is the flipparoo is that they're the expert.
So I'm not just pulling some dope out of the crowd and like, hey, dummy.
That's good, though, for the power dynamic.
It is, right?
Yeah, otherwise.
I'm telling you all about it.
I didn't know the part about somebody knowing.
I mean, I knew people would have a topic, but I didn't know they would actually know stuff about it.
Yeah, they're supposed to be Ken, right?
They're supposed to show up and be like, I'm here to talk to you for an hour and field every fucking weird question.
A phrase I learned from Mitchell and Webb.
He's the boffin.
Like the professor type.
right yeah it's um yeah it's it's it's it's interesting it's it's crazy and so how's it going well i've done like 10 shows fuck you uh people i've got 250 show proposals from people submissions gemini but only one of them has come out so the entire like fan community is basing their whole reaction to it on the first episode and
And, you know, of course, the first episode, the guy showed up and he was like, um, I hope it's okay that I'm using my Logitech headset microphone from 1997 that came bundled with my Dell computer.
And I was like, ah, we should have.
It still smells like Fritos and gay insults.
Yeah.
Like we should have thought of that.
And we did, you know, we did.
But there's always so much you can do.
That's why you're baking the universe.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
Only so much you can do.
And we've got this whole thing now where it's like, well, maybe we should buy five really good microphones and just mail them to people.
But then there's going to be technologies.
The people are going to say, where is this microphone plug?
You're still going to have spotty internet.
You're still going to have barking dogs.
You're still going to have, I mean, there's so many of my friends that record.
Which is all part of it.
The very, very popular, wonderful podcast that Syracuse does with two of our other friends, I think one of the reasons they record at night is because every time they record during the day, there's somebody outside doing yard work or something.
Sure, there's a jackhammer or a streetcar.
A streetcar, like the Altera Vol goes by every few minutes.
Or a 3D printer in the background that's going.
Or a guy with a leaf blower.
Or the lady that lives down below him with another leaf blower.
you kidding me i'm the concierge she yells out the window dirty boys but the crazy thing for me i mean right now so all 10 of the people that i've talked to have been great like smart and fun that's terrific yeah super funny it's just now watching the people receive i understand why podcasts when they debut they put out five episodes right at the start like here's here you know listen to all five of these
Yeah, because you need to listen to two or three before you know whether you could love it.
Exactly.
And now there's this... We put out one last week.
There's another one coming out this week.
And the whole listenership is like, okay, that first one was pretty good.
And it's just like for me, just not wanting each one of these new co-hosts to just be thrown into the pyre of...
of all the the people that and i think the fan you know this is the thing you and i know both nerd nerd fan communities are so supportive of each other and the way that they've been receiving the idea all of a sudden like oh it's one of us like every week it's going to be one of us
and so i think they're not gonna their instinct is not going to be like this snorks it's like a snork like hey another snork made it you know and like made it through they made it through rise rise exactly so i'm hoping but it's fun it's fun and it's just like you know that's that's it's changed definitely my relationship with thinking of myself as an interviewer because usually
I'm asked up on stage to interview somebody who's really famous.
But you sound buoyant and energetic about it.
It's nice that you're, it's nice that you're, no, I'm sorry I interrupted you, but you sound buoyant and enthusiastic about it, which after 10 episodes of recording something, that's great, man.
That's a really good sign.
Well, let me put it differently.
Like if I were going to be like a dipshit from the internet, the way I'd put it is, it's good that you're not exhausted and hating it.
Oh, yeah.
I'm really happy to hear that, John.
It's a risky proposition, so that's great to hear.
Yeah, it's different in that I think we all know, and everybody I talked to before going into this said, people listen to podcasts to hear the rapport between the two people that they know and like.
And did I tell you I talked to Marco, and Marco was like... Oh, Marco's great.
He's on that podcast with Syracuse I was talking about.
Yeah, he's got a podcast with a guy named...
But he said, look, no matter what happens, you're gonna lose half your audience.
So don't even stress about it.
Don't sweat it.
I just never know which half.
Because half of the people are gonna be like, I just wanted to hear Ken talk to John about it.
And I was like, yeah, I know.
I don't like that listener.
That voice is frustrating.
But he actually gave me a great, it was a great relief.
He took the, because what he was saying was, don't spend every day trying to keep everybody.
Just find a new thing and do a new thing.
And I was like, right, okay, well, that is a lot easier than trying to, I am doing a thing that I wasn't doing before, but it's like I'm not trying to chase every single mad person down the street going like, no, no, no, come back.
That is such an anti-pattern.
It feels useful, but it's so harmful.
It feels secure.
It feels safe.
It feels smart.
But sometimes the worst thing you can do is stand still.
yeah well you know and here's the other thing right we're guys in our mid 50s let's just say mid 50s and a lot of people i'm going to be officially very close to 60 in two days very close to 60. it's okay i mean i'm it's better than the alternative for now well i mean i i'm surprised at the number of 60 year olds i know because all those grunge dudes that were just a little older than me they're all 60. i still i can't always think about blondie
Well, yeah, they're all 90.
I know.
They're 90 years old.
Yeah.
But the idea that we, you know, everybody talks about, oh, the boomers, they took all the money.
But like we actually were raised in a world where there still were lots of people that retired at
55 or 60?
I was thinking about it.
I was thinking about this morning.
Remember a long time ago, I sent you that spreadsheet that I made.
I think I'm pretty sure I sent this to you, where you can punch in your... I made this really cool spreadsheet where you can punch in the names of your relatives and when they were born, and it'll show you... It creates a table that shows you various combinations.
So a way to say that...
When my kid was on this day, you know, like on this particular day, my kid turned 15.
Well, this is the day my mother-in-law turned 15.
I loved that spreadsheet.
Yeah.
And here's, and like, here's a popular song from that time and stuff like that.
So, but like, you know what I mean?
Because, you know, people do get older and they do change and there's, there's, there's a lot of deltas, but you know, yeah, you don't meet that many.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My grandfather was born in 1901.
I was thinking about this literally this morning when I was laying in bed.
1901?
1901.
And so I was doing the spreadsheet in my head and going like, well, I know, for example, that one of the unanswered questions that I don't really want the answer to is why did the very, as soon as my grandfather retired,
And he moved, he and my grandmother moved to Florida immediately, which means they moved to Florida like five months before I was born, which is kind of weird.
Like it does kind of feel like they were avoiding me and I, but whatever you're saying.
Yeah.
No, I mean, like, ordinarily grandparents... It was before we understood that it takes a village.
It takes so many villages, and there was a time where, like, if I were going to write that scene for a TV show, an ABC very special episode, I would say something like, oh, you're going to have this beautiful child, finally, after all this trouble, 10 years of trying to have a kid, three miscarriages, now we're going to have this kid, and, of course, we will stay in Cincinnati, at least through the end of the year...
But no, we got to bounce.
And I was just thinking about that.
When I was doing the spreadsheet in my head and thinking, like, my grandfather, who shut off people's electricity for a living until Revolver was out, you know, that was his job, Cincinnati Gas and Electric.
And so, yeah, he was 65 in 66.
And I'm 59 in 25, which is pretty goddamn weird.
I don't currently have plans to retire.
How could we?
You and I can't retire.
I was trying to be subtle.
I don't have any money, John.
What would we do?
Well, I mean, there's no retirement.
You know, a lot of those guys, they have a heart attack a week after.
I know, and there's no... They get into model trains.
What would we retire, and what would you do?
You'd go get a 3D printer and... They'd masturbate more elaborately.
Yeah, I mean, what I do, there's nothing I could do.
Well, yeah, everybody's different.
Yeah, but I mean, it's not like I can stop working, right?
No, I know.
I don't want to talk about it.
It's very impressive to me.
But that's the crazy thing.
I don't know.
The number of 55-year-olds who have to, at 55, pivot again to a new life is
and keep struggling and keep hustling, I think there's more of us now than ever before.
I always have this suspicion, and maybe this might be unintentional sour grapes.
I don't think it is, but I'm open to the idea that it could be.
But there's also this part of me that thinks...
This is not the first generation.
Well, the last generation ran into a thing that hadn't happened before, which was people who thought they had enough for retirement but didn't.
And there are people who I think are awfully aggressive in their plan to retire who I guess are just not only way better at having and organizing planning money stuff than I am, but they have some kind of a certainty about that that I don't have in any part of my life, let alone retirement.
Yeah.
so i don't mean it as sour grapes but sometimes people are like i'm gonna retire i got my 30 years i'm gonna get my gold watch or whatever it's like yeah i guess so my mom had to go back to work twice i mean the number of people that we know that retire could have retired should have retired at 35 and gotten out of the got out and gotten out of the way yeah those are the ones that you really want to hold underwater but yeah i mean it's it's it's different to pivot when you're 60 to a new thing because you're tired
Absolutely.
You're so tired.
Well, and you've got, if not self-esteem, you've got at least a little bit of self-knowledge.
So like the way that I would just run myself to a nub when I was 23, I mean, even if I wanted to, I would not be able to run myself to a nub today.
First of all, I mean, I'm happy to say that there are impulses based on fucking years of difficult training that have led me to have the self-esteem to say, well, you know what?
Yeah.
to even call it rest rest is rest is not something you do with shame rest should be part of your life like and you shouldn't have to have everything in your life be some binary that's work and home and all these different things and like that's if that's how you want to live that's fine it's not 1948 anymore but like whatever that's you know you got to live the way you want to live but there's a lot of stuff that seemed like settled law a few years ago to a lot of people that feels a little at least a little bit more up in the air than it used to be
Yeah.
I mean, am I right about that?
Well, I don't, you know, I would like to rest, but then again, I've been resting.
I have resting bitch face, but I've been resting some portion of every day.
For my whole life.
Well, I'm frustrated with how I feel very actively made to feel ashamed about wanting to have agency over my time and attention.
That's how I made a little miniature career in some ways, is the tyranny of other people pressing your trauma bruises to make you think that your time and attention are not worth defending, let alone celebrating.
That's the part that I find so difficult.
It's like if you get into a rut that benefits you, good for you, but a rut is still a rut regardless of how comfortable you are with where you're headed.
Jesus Christ.
Imagine being Billy Barty.
What that career is like.
I mean, imagine being Billy Barty's father.
William Barty.
Yeah.
Mr. Barty's my father.
Bill Barty.
Did you look up?
I'm sorry.
Did you look up?
I didn't have my bell, so we blew that one.
Were you able to look up a picture of Jack Purvis and Kenny Baker together?
Oh, Jack Purvis.
P-U-R-V-I-S and Kenny Baker.
What the English call a double act.
They would sing, they did comedy, and they had really cute tuxedos.
Cute.
I'm sorry.
That was condescending.
They've got adorable tuxedos.
Wow.
And were they both in Time Bandits?
I think they were.
Jack Purvis was the guy with the hat.
wow they had an act like a like a like a buddy a double act it was like a cabaret act they could do in like a small theater yeah yeah yeah or like a dinner club or whatever that's how they both started yeah isn't that wild well and what's wild is that uh that jack uh died when he was 60.
Oh, man.
Sorry.
Look at that guy.
Kenny lived to be 80, so.
Bless his heart.
Yeah.
Was he in that Paul Lynde kiss Halloween special?
I feel like he probably should have been if he wasn't.
You know, I only saw that on TV at the time.
I've never seen it since.
It's on the YouTube and it's really good.
They played Detroit Rock City and Paul Lynde pulls a long face.
And the guests, they have Witchy Poo from H.R.
Puff and stuff and Margaret Hamilton from The Wizard of Oz.
How would you rank it compared to the Star Wars Christmas special?
It's better.
It's better?
Yeah.
I admire the Star Wars Christmas special because so much of it is in the aboriginal Wookiee.
Oh, it's in Wookiee?
See, I haven't seen it since the time.
Oh, no.
It's fun.
It's fun and silly.
It's got Boba Fett in a cartoon.
But no, it's fine.
It's...
There's a scene where the grandfather guy is watching virtual reality, Diane Carroll, do a very, very sexy dance, and it's kind of upsetting.
And it's also got Maude.
Maude is in it.
She dresses, yeah, like she always does.
She dresses like Dr. Zayas, and she's a bartender.
And it's also got Harvey Korman, and it's also got, who's the other guy in that?
It's got, oh, it's got Art Carney from The Honeymooners.
See, amazing.
It's like a battle of the network stars, like everything then was.
Can I bring it all together in a way that you'll find very frustrating?
I would really like that.
Thank you so much.
And then I'll ding us out after you make a noise.
I'm counting on you to make your own version of sort of like a Yosemite Sam kind of noise.
Like for me, that would be something like, ooh!
There's a surprisingly entertaining documentary about the Star Wars Holiday Special that features one of the people on it is a Hollywood writer who had worked on this.
The reason I mention it here is it is fascinating how this thing got made and how it could never be made today in a million ways.
But a lot of it was like, you know, they're like, blah, blah, blah, something, something, Star Wars.
But they basically brought in the kind of, you know, production stuff
unit that you would use for like Donnie and Marie.
Right, right.
Which is why it's the way that it is and being run by people who don't know.
I mean, it sounds silly to say now.
I mean, back then you would say, oh, I don't know.
Oh, you shouldn't hire them.
They don't know that much about Star Wars.
What are you talking about?
Right.
They make 700 TV shows.
It's a popular movie from this summer.
It's okay.
I've worked with Don Rickles.
I think I can handle this.
And they put that on.
Now, one of the fellas who's a main character in this is a famous Hollywood writer who, as it happens, had also worked on the Paul Lynn Halloween special.
Paul Lynn Halloween special?
That's the one with Kiss.
Yeah.
Well, was it Cher?
It's Bruce Valanche.
I just imagine you now.
The dolly shot from our current crane shot from above.
The lance!
The lance!